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A nuclear radioactive mess under London’s Olympic Games site?

Tonnes of radioactive waste casts doubt over London’s Olympic stadium legacy• Presence of waste on site could complicate redevelopment after 2012 Games | UK news | The Guardian, Ian Griffiths 20 June 2010,
The development of the Olympic site in east London after the Games have finished could be in jeopardy because of radioactive waste buried beneath the site, experts have warned.

According to a Guardian investigation, any development of the site risks unearthing a hundred tonnes of radioactive waste dumped at the former landfill site decades ago. Documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) rules reveal that, contrary to government guidelines, waste from thorium and radium has been mixed with very low-level waste and buried in a so-called disposal cell close to the Olympic stadium – about 500m to the north………Overall, there is some doubt about the applicability and validity of the radiological risk analysis undertaken for the future legacy use.”……….

Disposal

The dossier has been reviewed by John Large, who has been engaged to analyse the data. He said: “As part of the on-site assaying, the ODA contractors were clearly separating out exempt waste from non-exempt batches of low-level waste with the intention, then, of sending this higher [radio]activity non-exempt waste to a radioactive waste disposal site, such as Drigg [in Cumbria].”

He continued: “At the best, this might be interpreted as a misplaced interpretation of the radioactive waste regulations or, at the worse, some might view it as blatantly cooking the books to save on the high cost of off-site radioactive waste disposal.”

Tonnes of radioactive waste casts doubt over London’s Olympic stadium legacy | UK news | The Guardian

June 23, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, uranium