Traces of cesium 137

Emily Parsons, reporting for The Whitehaven News was up for a pizza…

The so-called Pizza Cumbriana was created eight years ago by Core (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment), to highlight their concerns about plans by Italy to ship more irradiated (spent) fuel to Sellafield for reprocessing.

To illustrate the environmental damage caused by such trade, Core presented the embassy with a unique West Cumbrian “pizza”, complete with a topping of mud and seaweed collected from a public footpath crossing the River Esk estuary.

An analysis of the material by the University of Manchester had shown the topping to contain levels of radioactivity that would be illegal in Italy and which, in the UK, would classify it as Low Level Waste (LLW).

The condemned pizza was swiftly removed by the Environment Agency and has languished ever since with other LLW at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Didcot, Oxford. Now it has been finally transported by road to its rightful resting place to the Low Level Waste disposal facility at Drigg.

Martin Forwood, Core spokesman, said: “Burying our pizza at Drigg is proof positive that some of west Cumbria’s coastal areas are nothing more than nuclear wastelands.”

A report produced by Harwell Scientifics Ltd for the Environment Agency entitled ‘Analysis of a Pizza Comprising of Sediment’ (RD 0693) confirmed the presence of high levels of Caesium 137, Americium 241, and Plutonium 238, 239 and 240. Images: Whitehaven News / Photaki (30/4/13)

Mamma Mia - we're off the menu!!

This comes from the English news section of Xinhau…

Traces of cesium-137 above the ruled thresholds have been detected in Italy's boars, local reports said recently.

The radioactive isotope of the element cesium was found following routine surveillance on tongue and diaphragm from boars in Italy’s northern Piedmont region, according to a statement published on the health ministry's website.

The samples were from wild boars captured during the 2012-2013 hunt season. On 27 of them, cesium-137 levels were above the ruled threshold, established as the upper limit after nuclear incident.

Experts quoted by the ANSA news agency estimated that the radioactive isotope may derive from the Russian Chernobyl nuclear power plant, after the 1986 accident.

Some said that two nuclear sites in Piedmont region, the Trino Vercellese station dismantled in 1987 and an experimental site in the Saluggia area, as well as toxic waste, may also be at the origin of the findings.

"The cesium-137 is an artificial radionuclide produced by nuclear fission, and is released from nuclear sites," said the head of the Enea Radiation Protection Institute, Elena Fantuzzi. However, she added that the presence of cesium-137 is continuously monitored at the national level and the amounts detected "have never been worrying."

In her view, it is also important to consider whether the metabolism of boars may facilitate the accumulation of the radioactive isotope above the limits considered as safe. Images: Shutterstock / Wine Tours (15/3/13)