Olympic Park Radioactive Waste Scare as Regulations Breached
Article | Environment | Health | Legacy | Sustainability
Olympic contractor tests a soil sample for radiation with a Geiger counter. Photo © Mike Wells
A document obtained from an undisclosed source reveals that hazardous radioactive waste was excavated and moved within the London Olympic Park before official permission was granted.
In this document Vivienne Ramsey, head of planning for the Olympic project, warns the Olympic Delivery Authority …
“You are reminded that Remediation Change Notes [legal documents allowing work to continue] are intended to be issued and agreed prior to works being undertaken. The submitted Note is retrospective and therefore gives the Local Planning Authority no opportunity to comment on the adequacy of the proposed measures prior to them being carried out.”
The fact that work to excavate, handle, transport, and store this material was carried out before permission was granted is a serious breach of regulations, and places doubt on the safety of workers and local residents. The situation may also influence the legacy value of land and housing.
Though the authorities have known for some time that radioactive waste was buried in the Olympic Park it is not until now that the scale of the problem has emerged. Documents reveal that more than 7,000 tonnes of waste has been found on site to date, much of it unexpected. Some 7,300 tonnes has been placed in a radioactive storage bunker built into the approach to a bridge in the Olympic Park – within 250m of Stratford International station and around 400 metres from the Olympic Stadium. Olympic Delivery Authority contractors claim that the waste in the storage cell will be safe for at least 1,000 years. The waste, a legacy of the site’s industrial history, is something Olympic bosses have been trying to play down, stressing that it is “Low Level” and “naturally occurring” radioactive material.
However, Doctor Chris Busby, an expert on radiation and health, comments that radioactive material can be classified as Low Level or Naturally Occurring but still be extremely hazardous.
Dr Busby also notes that data on radioactive material in the Olympic Park shows a radiation signature which…
“suggests that the contamination is from significant levels of uranium. This should be considered to be a serious alpha and photoelectron emitter inhalation hazard.”
Much of the buried radioactive waste has been found on the site of the main stadium itself and includes radium, polonium, and thorium as well as uranium. The race to meet the Olympic deadline may have resulted in inadequate surveying, as the radioactive hazard was only detected after contaminated material had been unwittingly excavated.
Agencies with workers on site include the Environment Agency and the Police; neither of these agencies have any information on the risk assessment for any potential radiological uptake of their staff on the Olympic site.
One of the pathways for radiological uptake is from dust. Another document shows concerns over inadequate dust suppression on site. Residents living near the Olympic construction site have been complaining of dust from the site since works began in 2007, yet attempts to improve poor dust management measures have only been implemented relatively recently.
Doctor Busby comments that …
“if there is documentary evidence of the disposal of Thorium waste at the site, then this has to be taken seriously as Thorium dust represents a serious radiological inhalation hazard. “
Another request for data on radiation monitoring was refused by the Olympic Delivery Authority who say the cost of collating the data is too high, they claim …
“the public interest in maintaining the exemption [to withhold the information] outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.”
In another departure from normal practice, areas of the Olympic construction site that are contaminated with radioactive material are not marked with the familiar “radioactive roundel” but rather have been marked “Heavily Contaminated Area”.
© Mike J Wells July 2009
Submitted by Martin Slavin on Mon, 27/07/2009 - 15:39.
ODA request that I post their press release.
Submitted by Mike Wells on Tue, 25/08/2009 - 16:55.
The ODA emailed me as the author of this piece insisting that in the "interest of balance and accuracy" I post their press release as a comment here.
ODA STATEMENT
An ODA spokesperson said: “Health and safety of the workforce and local people is our number one priority. In the cleaning and clearing of the Olympic Park, much of it contaminated through decades of industrial use, we have reused over 80% of previously contaminated soil that we excavated and recycle or store of reuse over 90% of demolition materials.
“As we announced last year small amounts of material containing low level radioactive elements was found during the clean up of the site. In accordance with Environment Agency guidance a small amount of soil containing traces of this very low level radioactive material, classed as ‘exempt’ under current environmental law, has been safely buried in a cell under a bridge embankment on site. It is covered and capped on all sides. This safe disposal has been approved by the Environment Agency and the legacy landowner the London Development Agency and in no way poses a risk to the health of the workforce or public now or in the future.”
- The whole process has been carefully monitored and measurements taken standing directly on the bridge show no increase over normal background radiation levels.
- The concentration of the radioactivity in the material is well below the levels that require controls by law and it is buried at least 3 metres below a bridge abutment and road.
- Neither workers or the public will be in direct contact with the material and will not be exposed to increased levels of direct radiation in any way. Being on a plane for an hour would give you a dose of radiation which would be 1000 times the exposure from this buried material.
An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “A 1940s landfill site has been cleared during the construction of the Olympic Park. Some of the soil from the clearance work contained traces of low level radioactivity - a level comparable to background radiation naturally occurring in geological formations such as granite.
“The Olympic Delivery Authority, in consultation with the Environment Agency, safely buried this soil in a cell, covered and capped on all sides, on site. This is a proven, safe method of disposing of such material, ensuring that there is no impact on people or the environment. At no point during this process were the workforce or public exposed to increased levels of radiation either through direct contact or dust.”
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Regarding ODA comment
Submitted by Charles Batsworth on Fri, 28/08/2009 - 09:38.
I hope the ODA's specialist contractors had nothing to do with this statement - it shows little understanding of the risks of radioactivity in the environment or of major, rushed construction projects on contaminated land.
Firstly, it is patently rhetorical to claim that the health of the workforce and general public is the number one priority. The priority is to complete substantial earthworks in order to engineer an Olympic Park to the satisfaction of the IOC in time for 2012, and with land levelled for maximum development potential. If minimising risk was paramount, there would be no question of excavating 2.5 million tonnes of contaminated soil, the bulk of it merely for the purposes of landscaping, not remediation. Even work undertaken with the specific intention of remediation can potentially cause greater risk than leaving the site alone, as the Corby case has shown.
The 'sweeping under the carpet' of radioactive material into its on-site storage bunker demonstrates the superficialty of this token 'cleanup'. Most people would have the impression that a cleaned-up park is exactly that, a place that is deep-down decontaminated, a place in which you could plant vegetables or fruit trees anywhere and have private gardens. But the ODA’s own planning documents show this is not the case. What the ODA are calling a clean up largely consists of dumping half a metre of 'clean' soil on top of existing contamination. In parts of the site risk to future users may well have been increased rather than reduced.
Referring to over 7000 tonnes of material requiring special precautions during handling as a 'small amount' containing 'traces' of radioactivity is misleading, as is the assertion that there is no risk to workers. For example the Prior Risk Assessment describing the precautions to be taken during the moving of the material into the storage cell:
"Failure of the system of work for radiological controls ... could result in the chronic exposure of personnel to radioactive contamination due to potential spread of contamination from well defined areas and potential airborne contamination. This could result in both internal and airborne radiation hazards"
Not my idea of a risk-free undertaking.
Only a couple of days previously I'd been discussing with friends the popularity of the 'air travel radiation' fallacy to dismiss justified radiation concerns. Here's what Dr Chris Busby, specialist in the effects of radioactive contamination on health, has to say:
"The argument is specious. The external radiation dose is not a problem so comparing with planes etc is their usual recourse. It is the inhalation of uranium and other radioactive particles that is the problem, and these can give very much higher LOCAL doses to tissue in the areas where they fetch up."
The Environment Agency quote is also worrying rather than reassuring - the radiation levels may be no more than from some granite, but granite frequently contains high levels of uranium ore. Granite dust is particularly toxic and I hope they are aware of this if they are cutting it up on site. Given their critical role in environmental safety they should not be perpetuating the myth that naturally occurring radioactivity is harmless.
Anyone who reads the Games Monitor article carefully will see that there is no assertion that the material once in its 'radioactive bunker' is the primary source of risk. The risk is in the excavation, transport and handling of material that was doing no harm where it was.
If this is such an uncontroversial and harmless solution to the disposal of this radioactive material, why did the ODA keep it so quiet? I don't recall seeing this proudly anounced on the London 2012 website, along with the soil washing machines and such like : "On time and on budget, a new world-class Radioactive Waste Disposal Cell has been completed to keep the local community safe for generations to come (if our calculations are correct)."
And what does it say about the Olympic planning controls when the documents describing the project were only submitted for approval at the same time the project was completed.?
This is one of the most important and worrying points in the Games Monitor article. The ODA’s comments above ignore this fact. As a local resident I demand that the ODA come clean on this. Why was work carried out before official permission was granted, and who is really in control of this shambles?
Regarding the issue of dust. There is clearly no question that the Olympic Park is contaminated. There seems to be no question that dust is coming off this site. One local resident went so far as to say that they were literally eating dust from the site. There have also been reports of local air-conditioning failing after clogging up with dust. It seems only a matter of logic that dust coming from a contaminated site is likely to be contaminated. Residents of Leabank Square (an estate opposite the Olympic Park) were so pissed off with the situation that they called ODA staff “liars” because of the unfulfilled “promises” to deal with this. The ODA have now gone on to the threaten to sue Leabank Square.
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What the ODA and HSE had to say about the Eastway contamination
Submitted by Julian Cheyne on Fri, 11/09/2009 - 01:29.
It’s interesting to consider what the experts had to say about the Eastway/West Ham Tip at the time residents and travellers were still living at Clays Lane in 2007 when the clean up/dust production started and in early 2008.
Regarding the ‘clean up’ of the Eastway Lawrence Waterman, the ODA’s head of Health and Safety, said in February 2008 that the decontamination programme ‘is dealing with an area of contamination and semi-dereliction that represented over many years a far greater risk to public health than the short-term clean-up process.’ Actually the greater danger arose from digging it up and turning it into dust. Indeed a DEFRA document ‘Industry Profiles’ specifically refers to the dangers of inhaling thorium dust, thorium being one of the radioactive elements expected to be present in the Eastway and other sites.
However, if what he said was true he had to explain how those of us at Clays Lane had been allowed to live there for 25 years without anyone showing any concern for us despite the fact that we were living on or next to this ‘greater risk to public health’. Of course he didn’t.
The same Industry Profiles document warned about ‘Landfill sites…capable (of producing effective dose), but only in some cases, eg closed landfills in a region containing industries which have produced or disposed of radioactive wastes prior to 1963.’ The West Ham Tip, which included Clays Lane and the Eastway Cycle Track, was just such a landfill site. The document went on to say ‘The use of radioactive materials, and the consequent possibility of disposal to landfill, was historically more widespread than at present…. Wastes from these activities are likely to have arisen from the early 1900s onwards and will have been disposed of along with domestic refuse.’ In other words the stuff could be lying around anywhere.
However, when I was emailing the HSE about these problems the officer dealing with my enquiries responded in July 2007,‘As I understand it, you are saying that reports hint that such material could be anywhere but I've seen nothing that says this is really so.’
Well, yes, actually, that was what the report was hinting!
It made me wonder if he had ever read the DEFRA document or knew anything about the history of the site.
7,000 tonnes of radioactively contaminated soil buried on site suggests quite a lot of radioactive material was lying around.
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Public interest - who decides?
“the public interest in maintaining the exemption [to withhold the information] outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.” - According to whom? When was the "public" consulted on this matter? As a member of the public living near to the site, I feel quite certain that disclosing the information about radioactive waste far outweighs any benefit from withholding it. We need to step up the pressure. Government petition?