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.

     ------------------------------------------------------------------

     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.