The New Nuclear Dawn

Get your mutations here. 5 for a pound

Rather scarily a number of food plants in common use today originated from well meaning, but in hindsight downright foolish experiments. New Scientist reported this week Fortunately society has moved on and attempts to genetically mutate our foodstock by not so well meaning trans-national corporations are being hindered by the environmentalists among us. However in the 1950's post Hiroshima and pre Silent Spring it seems any curious individual could get their hands on some radioactive material. and.... Gosh look at the size of my cabbages!!...we could solve world poverty...put an end to famine. Some of these foods appear to have survived, though with the 1957 fire at Cumbria's, Windscale Plutonium enrichment plant the UK Atomic Energy Authority, started to take radiation more seriously. Thank goodness too.

Discharged plutonium readily builds up in filter feeders like mussels

Early in the 1950s, UKAEA carried out experiments deliberately discharging large amounts of radioactivity into the Irish Sea to study the effect of all the different radioactive substances on the environment. Dr. John Dunster physicist in charge said in 1958, at the 2nd UN conference on "peaceful" uses of nuclear energy: "The intention has been to discharge fairly substantial amounts of radioactivity … the aims of this experiment would have been defeated if the level of radioactivity discharged had been kept to a minimum." The largest concentrations of radioactivity may be found along the coastline off the Sellafield site itself where higher concentrations of plutonium have been detected than those meassured around Chernobyl. Following deliberate and accidental releases of radiation due to incompetence, including a fire in 1957 (the seriousness of which was covered up for 30 years), the Irish Sea is today the world's most radioactive polluted sea. Sellafield is also one of the most major contributors of radioactive contamination to the Arctic marine area. Contamination from the plant can be traced in the environment all the way from the Irish Sea to the Barents Sea.

Fore more detailed information check out the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental NGO based in Norway. Founded in 1986 as a direct action protest group, Bellona has become a recognised technology and solution-oriented organization with offices in Oslo, Brussels, Washington D.C., St. Petersburg and Murmansk. Altogether, some 75 engineers, ecologists, nuclear physicists, economists, lawyers, political scientists and journalists work at Bellona.