[1596] in Humor
HUMOR: Greenpeace
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Wed Sep 11 22:07:05 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 22:00:00 EDT
Ya gotta love it...
-Drew
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 14:53:24 EDT
From: "Mark A. Herschberg" <hershey@MIT.EDU>
From: "Michael V. McMahon" <mmcmahon@MIT.EDU>
The following artical was posted to NucNet news:
Greenpeace Scores Own Goal
When, according to Greenpeace, is low-level radioactive material
"absolutely no health risk"? The answer, of course, is when that
material is stored in the back yard of Greenpeace's London
headquarters, next to a public footpath and 100 metres from a
children's park.
Greenpeace had been storing the sand from the Cumbrian coastline as
part of a publicity stunt to support its call for the immediate
closure of BNFL's Sellafield operations because of "dangerously
contaminated public beaches"
However, the revelation in yesterday's British Sunday newspapers that
contaminated material, sealed in plastic bags inside metal drums, was
being stored in the centre of London, caught Greenpeace in a trap. If
the sand from Sellafield's beaches was in anyway harmful, then storage
would have to be authorised under the Radioactive Substances Act
(RASA).
Greenpeace which has no such authorisation would have been accused of
committing a serious offence, carrying an unlimited fine or up to six
months in jail.
Threatened with an embarrassing site inspection to ascertain the
truth, Greenpeace admitted the material was harmless. BNFL commented:
"At last Greenpeace are saying what we have been saying for years -
that the discharges at Sellafield pose no risk to public health."
Greenpeace's Chief Press Officer, Adam Woolf, said today (Monday) that
the material would not be classified under the Act as radioactive
waste. However he continued to imply Sellafield's beaches were
dangerous.
A spokeswoman for the government's Environment Agency, responsible for
issuing authorisations under the RASA and policing any breaches, told
NucNet: "If the substance is found to be harmless and outside of the
remit of the Radioactive Substances Act, then no offence has been
committed. If that is the case, it would also prove that the sand on
the public beaches at Sellafield poses no risk to public health and
that the call to close Sellafield is a bit of nonsense".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Various
Editor / contact: Paul Seaman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1996 NucNet, nucnet@atagbe.ch
This material may be freely reproduced but NucNet must be quoted as the source.
NucNet Central Office
P.O. Box 5032, CH-3001
Berne, Switzerland.
Fax +41-31-382-4466
Phone+41-31-320-6111.
