nuclear-news

Four radioactively contaminated Minstry of Defence sites in Scotland

the MoD had offered the site to the Scottish Government for £1. The offer was refused, largely because of serious impediments related to the site, all of which had significant
financial implications. 

The MoD is institutionally incapable of transparency for security reasons – but that has invaded its corporate culture and it is now constitutionally incapable of honesty..

Four new MoD sites identified with radiation contamination – including Machrihanis ForArgyll.com,  December 12, 2011 Four new sites in Scotland  – all owned by the Ministry of Defence, have been identified as radiation contaminated, with an immediate call from MSPs for urgent action to ensure public safety.
The four sites are:

RAF Kinloss
RAF Machrihanish
the former Defence Aviation Repair Agency (DARA) at Almondbank near Perth
the former military land at Stirling Forthside.
These sites are in addition to the contamination found at Dalgety Bay in Fife.

There is no comfort in a ‘we told you so’, in this but when the MoD
was putting the former RAF Machrihanish on the market and employing an
agency to put a price on it, For Argyll discovered through Freedom of
Information, that the site, in cold war days, had underground silos
storing nuclear depth charges, some if not all brought in by sea to
the naval base on Campbeltown Loch….
We discovered, despite carefully worded deceptive affirmations by the
MoD, that they had not screened and cleaned the Machrihanish site
before offering it for sale – a process which included staff from the
defence estate agency working at it and potential buyers being shown
around it.

We discovered that the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)
had not been consulted or notified on the state of the site and had
not sought such engagement itself. While MoD establishments are
outwith SEPA’s normal controls, a point-of-sale status clearly enables
an intervention SEPA did not care to exercise.

Following our reports, Argyll and Bute Council notified SEPA of
concerns on radiation contamination at Machrihanish.

Finally the MoD admitted that what we had said was correct, They had
not screened or cleaned the site.

We do not know whether they have yet made any attempt to do so – but
the current identification of four new sites of contamination which
include Machrihanish would suggest that some screening – but not
cleaning – has been carried out.
We also revealed, from FoI, that the MoD had offered the site to the
Scottish Government for £1. The offer was refused, largely because of
serious impediments related to the site, all of which had significant
financial implications. That offer led to our insistence that this was
an act of price setting by the MoD and that they could not credibly
offer the site for sale as it stood to any buyer for more than that
£1.

This too had to be accepted and the MoD agreed eventually to sell the
site for £1, under a community buy out, to the Machrihanish Airbase
Community Company (MACC). MACC is raising funds not to buy the site
but to render it capable of supporting the range of responsibilities
it carries and  the enterprises they envisage there.

Obviously, after the national publicity today’s announcement will
attract, the MoD will have to clean the site before any sale – as they
should always have done as a matter of course.
Our extended research on the RAF Machrihanish site led to our
publication of a series of major articles.

After today’s news, Highland and Islands MSP, Mike Mackenzie says:
‘With four new sites identified with radium pollution, the Ministry of
Defence’s action must be open and transparent – especially after the
failures at Dalgety Bay, which still haven’t been resolved.

‘There are now five Scottish communities affected by radiation, which
is extremely bad news…..
The MoD and the UK Government need to clean up their act, both
literally and figuratively.

‘They need to be open and honest about contamination at sites like
Almondbank and they need to accept responsibility for cleaning up the
mess they have made over the years.’

The MoD is institutionally incapable of transparency for security
reasoins – but that has invaded its corporate culture and it is now
constitutionally incapable of
honesty…http://forargyll.com/2011/12/four-new-mod-sites-identified-with-radiation-contamination-including-machrihanish/.

December 14, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK