nuclear-news

Sellafield Whodunnit?  Answer: “Mystery Virus”

The Department of Health has a delicious sense of irony. While people “Stand Up to Cancer” and cakes are being baked across the UK to raise money for a well-known cancer charity, the Department of Health has released its Review of Childhood Cancer Incidence near Sellafield and Dounreay.

For decades the government has acknowledged a well-documented increase of childhood leukaemia in the area surrounding Sellafield. This includes a 10-fold increase in the village of Seascale. In the 1980s many local families living up to 20 miles away who had been impacted by this terrible disease took the operators of the Sellafield site (then British Nuclear Fuels Ltd) to court. The families lost their case with the judge ruling that radiation dose to the public from the plant was too low to have caused leukaemia. Variations of this judgement have been rammed down the throats of…