reprinted with permission from [Christine Dean]
Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 227-228
. . . Sellafield on the northwestern coast of England is where
British plutonium is made. . . . it is in this room where the
plutonium making begins. When it is finished, the radioactive
waste will have increased in volume by 200 times.
This is the new reprocessing plant, Thorpe. When it goes active
later this year, the chimneys will spew out an increase of 1,190
percent of krypton-85, a radioactive gas known to produce cancer.
The National Radiation Protection Board predicts two fatal cancers
and 100 skin cancers per year. Independent scientists say this is
an underestimate of five times. This gas is inert, it will stay in
the atmosphere, it will circle the world and, it's predicted, it
will alter global weather patterns. And no one knows how bad the
effects will be. . . .
Behind the gates of Sellafield lie eleven silos full of highly
toxic, highly volatile radioactive waste, and each silo contains
eight times the amount of radioactivity released by Chernobyl. And
each silo has to be cooled for years to prevent it from exploding.
Some are leaking. And we have 88 Chernobyls waiting to happen.
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Christine Dean
Christine Dean, Great Britain. Member of the Women's Camp on
Greenham Common, Great Britain.
We have some more slides, if we could continue, please? Can we
have the lights down? Okay.
[Slides]
And so we take the fire and we take the spirit of Greenham to
the gates of Sellafield where the British government has spent
seven million pounds on building this visitors' center to put out
their propaganda that nuclear technology is safe, is clean, is
natural. We pitch our tents and build our fire outside this
visitors' center so that we can tell the truth to the public. As
the visitors come out we talk to them and give them leaflets, and
we tell them that Sellafield on the northwestern coast of England
is where British plutonium is made. Here the plutonium for the
bomb tested at Maralinga was made, and it is here where the
plutonium for the bombs tested in the Nevada Desert, on Western
Shoshone land, is still made. They call it reprocessing, we don't.
It's just one more stage in the process they start when they mine
uranium in the making of their plutonium bombs. It is to this
place where the world's most poisonous waste travels by land and
by sea. And it is in this room where the plutonium making begins.
When it is finished, the radioactive waste will have increased in
volume by 200 times.
This is the new reprocessing plant, Thorpe. When it goes active
later this year, the chimneys will spew out an increase of 1,190
percent of krypton-85, a radioactive gas known to produce cancer.
The National Radiation Protection Board predicts two fatal cancers
and 100 skin cancers per year. Independent scientists say this is
an underestimate of five times. This gas is inert, it will stay in
the atmosphere, it will circle the world and, it's predicted, it
will alter global weather patterns. And no one knows how bad the
effects will be.
Already in the prevailing wind path from Sellafield, cancers
never before seen in teenagers are being recorded. Teenagers are
wearing bags on their bodies to receive their body waste because
their bowels have been eaten away by cancer. Liquid discharges
into the sea have created a 300-mile plutonium lake at the end of
the pipeline, and half a ton of plutonium lies on the sea bed. The
Irish Sea is the most radioactive sea in the world and it is
dying. The rain forests replenish parts of our atmosphere and the
oceans replenish the rest. All over the world, the nuclear
industry is pouring radioactive waste into the oceans and the
oceans are dying. The Ravenglas(?) ash-tree near to Sellafield
used to have a nesting population of 24,000 seagulls and five
other varieties of seabirds. They are now virtually extinct and
the eggs of the few survivors are radioactive. Radioactive
seaplants have recently been washed up on the beach. Mutated fish
are regularly caught by Irish fishermen and increased rates of
Down's Syndrome and leukemia are reported on the East coast of
Ireland and the West coast of England. The spray from the sea is
dried by wind and sun, and ends up as radioactive dust, which is
blown over beaches where children play and animals graze. The
contamination accumulates in the meat of the animals and in their
milk. And government scientists have found dust in people's homes
with contamination levels 27,000 times the expected background
levels. Child-leukemia rates around Sellafield are ten times the
national average, and close by in Seascale, one in 60 child deaths
are cancer related. On the gates of Sellafield we created a
radiation mourning symbol out of flowers. And as each flower was
positioned, we read out the name of a child suffering and dying
because of the contamination from this place. There were 200
flowers.
Behind the gates of Sellafield lie eleven silos full of highly
toxic, highly volatile radioactive waste, and each silo contains
eight times the amount of radioactivity released by Chernobyl. And
each silo has to be cooled for years to prevent it from exploding.
Some are leaking. And we have 88 Chernobyls waiting to happen. On
the other gate we place Lijon's(?) story, Lijon from Rongelap in
the Pactfic. She is unable to have children because of her
exposure to radioactive fallout, and she came to Greenham to warn
us, to warn the West of what our future is going to be. And at the
fire sits another woman who has come from another fire in the
Australian bush, where she talked with women who remember seeing
the big black mist that came over from the Maralinga tests. And so
it is at Sellafield as at o Greenham: Many women from around the
world sit around the fire and we share our knowledge and we share
our pain. This Hearing was opened by lighting the fire on a
mountain top. And these last days we have shared much knowledge
and much, much pain. I add my voice to the voices of you all.
Together we demand that this nuclear madness must be stopped. Set
before us is the choice of life or death, the yellow corn or the
yellow cake, nuclear energy or solar energy. Together we choose
life for our Mother Earth, for ourselves and for our children and
for our children's children.
Thank you.
Sharon Venne (Moderator)
Thank you very much for that presentation. Where is Anna? You're
next up.
I live in an area in northern Canada, well, not northern Canada,
in Saskatchewan, which is very close to a place called the
Primrose Bombing Range and we are the privileged people of having
the cruise missile tested within 20 miles of our territory. They
expropriated part of our territory in order to build the Primrose
Bombing Range and the reason that they land a cruise missile
there, says the United States of America and the Canadian
government, is because the land is "unoccupied". So I always
thought that Canada and the United States must have thought we
must be plants because they don't think of us as human beings.
Where is Anna? I can't keep telling stories indefinitely. Ah,
there we are. (...) Do we have one or two people speak? I thought
there was one witness. This is Ivan. Ah, we have two witnesses.
First, we will go with Anna and then we will have Ivan. They are
going to speak in Russian.