Nuclear Power Dossier: Licenced Emissions and Controlled Releases

Radioactive pollution doesn’t just leak from nuclear installations in emergencies and accidents. It is emitted from them, legally, every single day. These licenced emissions and controlled releases are necessary for the proper functioning of nuclear facilities and they release into the atmosphere and the environment a range of dangerous cancer-causing radioactive particles.

Since the discovery of cancer clusters around the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in 1983, several studies have revealed similar clusters around other nuclear facilities in and around the UK.

Clusters of childhood cancer, where the risks are anywhere from 8 to 15 times greater than would be expected, have, for instance, been confirmed in the vicinity of the nuclear reprocessing plants at Sellafield, Dounreay and Cap de la Hague in northern France.

In Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, near the Hinkley Point nuclear power station, the risk of cervical and kidney cancer is around six times the national average, leukaemia rates are four times and breast cancer twice the national average.

In Maldon along the Blackwater estuary in Essex,...

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