Dalgety Bay (Radiation)

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)]

I have called this debate for one purpose and one purpose only: to persuade the Ministry of Defence of the need for urgent action in an area in my constituency where radioactive materials have been discovered.

The affected land on the shores of the Firth of Forth occupied by and near Dalgety Bay sailing club is a few yards from people’s homes, near where children play, and is an area where many go for walks. But in the past six weeks, materials that were dumped there by the Ministry of Defence in the 1950s—aircraft dials, aircraft paint and other materials—have been discovered, with radioactive levels that are 10 times anything witnessed before. They are an undeniable hazard, they are materials which children should not touch, and they are particles which should be removed quickly and in full.

Urgent action is necessary not just because of risks to safety, but because the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has now stated publicly that unless the Ministry of Defence brings forward a remedial plan for the area, the agency will designate Dalgety Bay a radioactive contaminated piece of land. This will be the first and only land to be designated as radioactive contaminated in the United Kingdom, and the agency says that it will nominate the Ministry of Defence as the culpable party.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Ministry of Defence abdicated its responsibility for the contaminated land when it unilaterally informed the local forum that it

“had no plans to continue monitoring and removing contamination from the site”?

Surely such irresponsible inaction deserves the strongest condemnation.

[Mr Brown]

That was in 2010. I shall come to that.

I have had to call this debate because, despite a succession of approaches to the Ministry of Defence—letters, phone calls, a chance conversation with the Secretary of State for Defence, whom I acquainted with the issue—the Ministry of Defence has yet to instruct the necessary actions and agree that a plan for remedial work is prepared, funded and implemented.

Since 1983 I have been the Member of Parliament representing the community of Dalgety Bay. It is near where I grew up and went to school, and near where I live and where my children go to school, so I have been aware for many years of the history of the site and of the past dumping of materials there by the Ministry of Defence. Those came from Donibristle airfield, which was created in 1917, was opened, closed and then opened again, and when reopened became, like the nearby Royal Navy base, vital to the second world war effort. Even as late as 1959, when it was announced that it would be closed down as an aircraft repair yard, it employed 1,400 industrial and non-industrial staff.

In that time, disused aircraft, including aircraft dials, materials used for painting dials and other instruments, were broken up and dumped at Dalgety Bay. On that land houses were built and the sailing club was established. Since 1990 materials with some radioactivity have been detected at Dalgety Bay. In June that year, after environmental monitoring by Babcock, the owners of Rosyth dockyard, elevated radiation levels including the presence of radium 226, were found. At that time particles were removed. As was reported later, they were removed “as far as possible”, but since 1990 and at regular intervals, I and the local community council, headed by Colin McPhail, have pressed for regular monitoring of any potential threat to the safety of local residents and to reassure locals that we have consistently asked for surveys to be done, tests to be carried out and investigations to be made.

Until 17 October this year, no investigation that I have seen has yielded evidence of substantial pollution or danger. In fact, at the request of local people, the National Radiological Protection Board—now the Health Protection Agency—carried out surveys during May and June 1991, as it monitored the beach, and then in 1992, 1993 and 1994. It reported that it found only low-level contaminated material buried below a layer of soil.

That was followed in 1995 by a detailed risk assessment, commissioned from a multidisciplinary research team at the university of Aberdeen. Its purpose was to assess the implications of radiation contamination, to consider the level of risk to the public and to review the options for reducing the contamination, if that were necessary. The study found that the variations in the ambient radiation dose rate values were within normal levels and calculated that the highest ambient dose rate found at Dalgety Bay was only two thirds of that found naturally in the granite in Aberdeen.

When the inquiry team published their survey in 1998, they reported that radium contamination was present not as a layer in the sediment, but randomly distributed as particles. However, they found that the number of radiation particles found in the area surveyed was very small and, thus, the risk of coming into contact with such a particle was “very low”. They found that the risk of inhalation was also low and reported that skin contact with a particle for an extended period could produce a very small burn similar in nature and severity to a fire-ash burn, but concluded that the maximum fatal risk per year from inhaling or swallowing a radioactive particle to any user of the area surveyed was negligible; it was calculated as clearly

“less than one in a million”.

However, we rightly agreed that we would continue monitoring, and in 2006 SEPA compiled a report that concluded that further work needed to be done. It also highlighted the possibility of coastal erosion that might bring particles nearer to the surface, but said:

“The most probable effect of an encounter which lasts for a number of minutes is a skin burn. The chances of ingestion…is highly unlikely, around one in half a million per year”.

The common view locally was that during the break-up of some aircraft some of the redundant luminescent materials had been burnt, and it was likely that the resultant ash and clinker produced from burning were either buried or spread on the ground surface. It was reported:

“It is therefore possible that the action of burning of luminised dials can produce a diverse range of chemical forms”.

Since then, at our request and at the request of others, six monitoring surveys and three intrusive investigations were carried out by Entec over the course of 12 months, and they have found that the radioactive materials probably derived from a bed of ash material. But, as was reported,

“recontamination of the beach continued, indicating that either the ash horizon was not the only potential host material, or that”—

other—

“sources continued to be present…and continued to re-contaminate the beach.”

Of the 128 particles, 48 were recovered from investigations of the ash bed, 28 from clearance surveys of the beach and coastal path, and 51 from regular visits to monitor the area. These surveys made it clear that

“the data do not indicate a reducing rate of hazard recurrence…at the site.”

I should add that, also after our request, work was also commissioned over these years by the health board, whose study of data from 1975 to 2002 did not reveal any correlation between the location of the radioactive materials and the incidence of cancer. So until a few weeks ago none of these surveys revealed any substantial risk or out-of-the-ordinary levels of radiation. Many of them were carried out at the expense of the MOD, because it rightly recognised that this monitoring was its responsibility. But in mid-October, work done by SEPA dramatically revealed particles at a level of radiation 10 times that of any previous discovery and led to the decision by SEPA, after repeated contact with the MOD, that it had to take action in the weekend of 17 to 19 November to remove potentially dangerous items. This was work that, as the correspondence makes clear to me, the MOD was willing to instruct. However, unfortunately, it would not guarantee that it would immediately remove any items discovered or submit them for full investigation.

So on Saturday 19 November, without the help of the MOD, SEPA took action and removed what it reported to be

“a second potentially high activity source”.

It was

“five times greater activity than anything previously recovered”.

SEPA also reported that a

“second source was also recovered”

and that

“a third source was found at the surface”

and that required urgent action.

So the real issue here is that there needs to be agreement on a plan for remedial action, given what we know now about the radioactive materials on the site. In October, SEPA wrote to the defence industrial office asking for assistance in monitoring and for a plan of action to repair the site. On 10 November—I quote from its letter—the MOD said, astonishingly, that

“any suggestions that the Ministry should provide a plan of action is immature at this stage”.

On 24 November, SEPA again wrote to the MOD asking for a commitment to undertake appropriate remediation and

“the delivery of a plan”

with

“sufficient resources and funds to enable work to be undertaken”.

However, at the most recent meeting with the Dalgety Bay officials, the MOD was

“unable to commit to undertaking any remediation following site investigation”.

That has caused SEPA to say that unless there is a plan—not just agreed in principle but produced by the MOD—it will, in March next year, designate the site as contaminated and name the MOD as the responsible party