Recent Radioactive Contamination: British Isles.

Typedef

http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1113/water.html

Recently there has been a shutdown of water supply to a town in Wicklow due to natural Uranium leaking into a water supply.

Uranium-238 is a nasty substance and the fact that the water supply was shutdown implys that the levels of Uranium-238 found were far beyond normal.

Lots of the drinking water outside of urban areas in Ireland is in fact substandard and perhaps with better more consistent monitoring of the drinking water, this mass contamination could have been avoided.

http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=3292

Households in two Wicklow towns, Blessington and Arklow, have been ordered to boil their water because of bacteriological outbreaks and failures in sewage treatment, while the discovery of illegal septic dumps had jeopardized springs and wells elsewhere.

I'm not trying to scaremonger, the levels of Uranium-238 the people in question were exposed to were above international guidelines, added to which is the general sub standard quality of group water schemes in Ireland, I think it is the case that a very comprehensive review of non-urban water quality has to be undertaken State wide.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1113/nuclear.html

http://www.e4engineering.com/item.asp?id=47099&type=news
Twenty-one workers had detectable levels of radioactive contamination on protective clothing and two of these had skin contamination, one on their hands and face and the other on their hands.
The UKAEA has carried out preliminary measurements on ventilation equipment which indicates that no release of radioactivity to the atmosphere occurred.

[War drum hat]

Here is where I have to say that while Uranium contamination in Wicklow was probably avoidable, that contamination was a result of a natural phonema. Dounreay is a man made hazard though. Yes I realise the Irish government wanted to make a Nuclear plant in Waterford in the 1970s and thank god that didn't happen. Nuclear energy has the potential to cause lethal pollution in the event of an accident, just like in Dounreay. True the levels of contamination are probably not serious, but said levels might have been.

To my mind the Irish government has been negligent in it's ascription and imposition of water standards in Ireland, however without shouting "J'Accuse" the British Nuclear industry is a problem (environmentally speaking) of Britain's own creation.

That's the way I'd call it.
Typedef.