View Full Version : Help me try and understand, Please
stivagorm
10-May-07, 22:41
Guys, I am a wee bit sick and tired of a particular person moaning in the local paper about their beach being ruined and they are back and forth with legal letters to one another, granted they are concerned about their beach, but the bit I am strugglung to comprehend is................ If there is a professional body, checking the beach (and to a certain extent they are cleaning the beach), why , why, why is this person blocking them access to the beach ? especially if they are trying to help clean the beach ? it isnt as if this person is paying for them out of his own pocket ?
PLease can someone shed some light on this matter.
Thanks
changilass
10-May-07, 22:46
Think we would all like to hear this persons reasons
r.rackstraw
10-May-07, 23:07
Perish the thought, but might it all be about money!
Raise spurious safety concerns, keep the issue in the headlines and eventually there might be a payout of public money (our money) to settle the matter.
Mr P Cannop
10-May-07, 23:19
Guys, I am a wee bit sick and tired of a particular person moaning in the local paper about their beach being ruined and they are back and forth with legal letters to one another, granted they are concerned about their beach, but the bit I am strugglung to comprehend is................ If there is a professional body, checking the beach (and to a certain extent they are cleaning the beach), why , why, why is this person blocking them access to the beach ? especially if they are trying to help clean the beach ? it isnt as if this person is paying for them out of his own pocket ?
PLease can someone shed some light on this matter.
Thanks
is it some one from the Thurso C C ??
stivagorm
10-May-07, 23:57
is it some one from the Thurso C C ??
No it isn't, and to be quite honest, they seem to be totally avoiding the issue, they should be advising this person that these bodies, Professionals, should be left to do their Jobs. If i were in a position, I would say, Ok, if you dont let them do their job, you will only block them once and you've had that chance......so if you want the beach back to normal, do it yourself, or pay for it yourself..... But I doubt it if that would ever happen. Are there any councilors / politicians that would advise this person the same ? I doubt it.
oldmarine
11-May-07, 00:31
Are there any councilors / politicians that would advise this person the same ? I doubt it.
Unless their re-election depended on it, probably not.
Mr P Cannop
11-May-07, 00:49
who is the person ??
Jeemag_USA
11-May-07, 00:49
What beach is it?
I think the reason that the said person/owner of the beach blocks the professional body from checking the beach is that they have a legal obligation to do so. So no matter what happens, they have to do it. They cannot just walk away from the pollution that they have caused just because the owner blocks them.
IOW the owner is raising the profile of his problem with the way that the said professional body is checking the beach. If he just let them get on with it then they will carry on with the antiquated equipment that they are currently using.
The owner will force the professional body to update their equipment to a more sensitive type which will produce scientific results that will prove that the problem is more serious than the professional says it is.
So in a legal sense, if the situation is worse, remedial action will need to be improved and the compo will be increased at no extra expense to the owner.
I am fully in support of the owner of the beach, if it was mine, I'd do exactly the same. And I don't have to like a person to want justice for them either.
NickInTheNorth
11-May-07, 07:37
If this is the one I read about recently in the paper could it be some kind of party political issue. I seem to remember it is going to be the focus of a debate in parliament, the beach owner in question is a friend of Iain Duncan Smith, who is the MP initiating the debate. Now correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know Iain Duncan Smith has no legitimate connection (in a parliamentary way) with the area?
So why does his old pal close the beach to nicely co-incide with a debate being started by an MP with no connection to the place?
Weird
buggyracer
11-May-07, 10:02
I think the reason that the said person/owner of the beach blocks the professional body from checking the beach is that they have a legal obligation to do so. So no matter what happens, they have to do it. They cannot just walk away from the pollution that they have caused just because the owner blocks them.
IOW the owner is raising the profile of his problem with the way that the said professional body is checking the beach. If he just let them get on with it then they will carry on with the antiquated equipment that they are currently using.
The owner will force the professional body to update their equipment to a more sensitive type which will produce scientific results that will prove that the problem is more serious than the professional says it is.
So in a legal sense, if the situation is worse, remedial action will need to be improved and the compo will be increased at no extra expense to the owner.
I am fully in support of the owner of the beach, if it was mine, I'd do exactly the same. And I don't have to like a person to want justice for them either.
well said rheghead, if it was in our own back yards so to speak how many of us would be so understanding?
I fully agree with you Rheghead
How many other beaches are affected, we do not hear much about them as it is not in the interests of the examining body to declare clearly their findings, if there is a disinterested owner too, whose lives are put at risk when using the beaches - not theirs or their families as they know not to go there.
This is being done for everybodys safety and future, not just the landowners benefit.
oh come on now, there are huge signs at the beach, ridiculous statments in the paper by a certain woman, that has been knocked down publicly by proffesionals that have no involvment with dounreay.
it seems that no matter how hard they try to please certain individuals that they just shout and moan close the beach and then say that the commision isnt doing their job.
now tell me, how can they do their job when said owner wont let them have acess to do their job?
buggyracer
11-May-07, 10:48
brandy, if dounray had done there job in the first case we wouldnt be having this conversation!!
dounreay did do their job. unfortunatly when they were doing it .. no one knew what the repercusions would be.
they did not know about radiation and what it would do.
so you tell me who is more at fault.
people who are trying to fix a mistake that none of them had a hand it. something that happened years and years ago.. due to experimentation, that in all likleyhood did more damage to the men and women working their than anywhere.
or the man that is stopping every effort made to rectify something that no one today had anything to do with, but is left to clean up?
dounreay has taken responsibility for all that has happened and they are doing their best. its not like they are sitting on their hands humming away and saying.. oh well he dosent want his beach cleaned up nothing we can do.
they are actually fighting him, having to exspend capital that could be used to clean the beach, on just being able to get onto the beach.
do some reserch and tell me how dangerous a single particle is that is the size of a grain of sand. from what i have read, the only way it would cause you any harm is if you ingested it, and then that is negligible.
buggyracer
11-May-07, 11:49
therin lies the problem, we were a guinea pig when dounray opened and what do we have to show for it?
unless you are one of the workers or contractors employed by them nothing?
if there was no risk with dounray why not put it next to a big city with a ready made work force? why not? because they knew there was a risk thats why we got it, and what has the county gained from this, unless directly emplyoed by them nothing.
there mess, they should pay out, end of.
if a young child playing on the beach, ingested as you say a particle, would they then be neglible? would you then still fight there corner?
It seems IDS swallowed his "friend's" story hook line and sinker because I heard the debate in Parliament and he was saying that ingesting one of these particles would kill you, whereas the scientists say it would do nothing of the sort and you would have to keep one in the same place inside you for a period of time and it still wouldn't kill you. Times have moved on and this man can't have it both ways. If he wants the beach cleared he should let them get on with it. Seems to me he just wants compensation. Has anyone been harmed by going the beach? Ever?
NickInTheNorth
11-May-07, 11:57
There are many interesting articles on the web regarding the danger or not of radiation.
One here (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2414826.ece) which suggests that moving to London from Inverness would be more dangerous for your health than moving from Inverness to Chernobyl!
Speaking of people now living in the exclusion zone around chernobyl it comments:
He concluded the Chernobyl group absorbed radiation equivalent to more than the amount emitted during 1,200 chest x-rays, which was likely to cause one extra death in a hundred by increasing the risk of cancer.
I guess the truth is no-one yet knows exactly how dangerous or otherwise radioactive materials are. I do not see how not allowing monitoring helps anyone.
just to be cheeky, aberdeen has more radiation in the streets than said beach
I laughed a few years back when Minters "expert" slagged off the monitoring equipment and methods used by UKAEA to scan the beach. His "experts" said they had much more sophisticated equipment........not sure if it is still being used, but seem to recall it getting stuck in the sand and have never heard that it found one particle to date..........however there were many headlines highlighting the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the UKAEA equipment.
...however there were many headlines highlighting the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the UKAEA equipment.
If it is the type of equipment that I think they are using then they are using a potassium iodide detector which can be cooled down and warmed up as and when they need it. The resolution and sensitivity is poor which means that only a particle over a certain activity and size will be detected.
This detector has been largely superceded by the Germanium-lithium detector in almost all other applications because of the excellent sensitivity and resolution of detection. The trouble with them is that they need to be supercooled 24/7 which is more expensive and therfore less practical but not insurmountable difficulty.
The thing is, particle size and population are statistically related in an opposite manner. Therefore the Public is only getting half the facts.
Why shouldn't modern and effective equipment be used when it is available?
They use a Sodium-iodide, which is excellent for SEARCHING. A germanium detector does give better resolution and is better at identification - but is no good as a field instrument.
therin lies the problem, we were a guinea pig when dounray opened and what do we have to show for it?
unless you are one of the workers or contractors employed by them nothing?
An incredibly misinformed statement. How many people in Caithness and North Sutherland do not have at least one relative working at Dounreay.
As to those that are not directly employed at Dounreay how many are employed by the companies that service Dounreay indirectly such as shops, pubs and the building trade?
Dounreay has bought a massive amount of wealth into Caithness and everybody has either directly or indirectly benefited from it.
if there was no risk with dounray why not put it next to a big city with a ready made work force? why not? because they knew there was a risk thats why we got it, and what has the county gained from this, unless directly emplyoed by them nothing.
Fifty years ago there was no LMFBR's - Dounreay was the first in the world.
The technology was unproven yes, but were other issues besides radioactivity, hundreds of tonnes of liquid alkali metal for one.
there mess, they should pay out, end of.
Is anybody disputing that?
if a young child playing on the beach, ingested as you say a particle, would they then be neglible? would you then still fight there corner?
The point is that the UKAEA are trying to clear the beach of particles - what do you suggest, skim the beach of all sand down to 2ft? Where would you store the sand?
buggyracer
11-May-07, 19:24
[QUOTE=quirbal;222228]An incredibly misinformed statement. How many people in Caithness and North Sutherland do not have at least one relative working at Dounreay. i dont?
As to those that are not directly employed at Dounreay how many are employed by the companies that service Dounreay indirectly such as shops, pubs and the building trade? yes and how many industries have suffered due to it? tourism/fishing etc tec
Dounreay has bought a massive amount of wealth into Caithness and everybody has either directly or indirectly benefited from it. yes but if it didnt come something else would have.
Fifty years ago there was no LMFBR's - Dounreay was the first in the world.so why here? less head of population = less death count, when it went pear shaped or mushroom shaped.
The technology was unproven yes, but were other issues besides radioactivity, hundreds of tonnes of liquid alkali metal for one. so the risk was more than we thought?
Is anybody disputing that? yes thats the point of the post duh?
The point is that the UKAEA are trying to clear the beach of particles - what do you suggest, skim the beach of all sand down to 2ft? Where would you store the sand?trying to but to what avail?{/QUOTE]
i am not anti dounray, far from it, some of yourcomments i can agree with, but what i am anti is the fact that the county as a whole has not benifited directly from it, by your own words we were the first in the world and to me for taking that risk the county should have facillitys sports grounds etc second to none, i feel we have done our bit but have been short changed by not getting what i feel we are due, unlike shetland etc with the oil.
i dont?
No cousins, aunts or in-laws for example? You will be one of the very few then. How many of your family are indirectly employed as a result of Dounreay.
yes and how many industries have suffered due to it? tourism/fishing etc tec
The Dounreay visitors centre was one of the best visited attractions in Caithness.
Fishing, ok so there is a small exclusion zone around Dounreay, but that does not stop the majority of fishermen.
yes but if it didnt come something else would have.
What? Dounreay has bought immense benefits to Caithness.
less head of population = less death count, when it went pear shaped or mushroom shaped.
Well there might have been something in that, but the local MP did fight to bring the LMFBR to Caithness, and it was not a forgone conclusion that it would come.
so the risk was more than we thought?
I believe that everybody knows the dangers of Alkali Metals.
yes thats the point of the post duh?
You obviously have a poor grip of the facts and what the posts are about. Nobody is suggesting that the particles should not bee cleaned up, or even where they came from. The discussion between the various parties is what is the BEST way to carry out the clean up.
i am not anti dounray, far from it, some of yourcomments i can agree with, but what i am anti is the fact that the county as a whole has not benifited directly from it, by your own words we were the first in the world and to me for taking that risk the county should have facillitys sports grounds etc second to none, i feel we have done our bit but have been short changed by not getting what i feel we are due, unlike shetland etc with the oil.
The county as a whole has benefited greatly from Dounreay. Admittedly there has not been the investment that Shetland has had, but then that is partly down to the difference between the private and public sector.
The important thing is that Dounreay has shaped the comunity and kept the comunity together over the last fifty years. How many young people are now leaving Caithness because there is no future?
George Brims
11-May-07, 20:55
The point is that the UKAEA are trying to clear the beach of particles - what do you suggest, skim the beach of all sand down to 2ft? Where would you store the sand?
I would suggest they skim the beach of all sand down to a depth of *6* feet, extract the radioactive particles from it, and put the rest back. They should probably do that periodically for years. I don't think as an engineering problem that would be particularly difficult. There is probably mining industry equipment that could be adapted to the task. Just think, if those particles were diamonds, how quickly would someone come up with a method for sorting them from the sand?
A seabed survey to determine what areas should be vacuumed up and similarly filtered is probably also in order. If that was done effectively the onshore problem would go away sooner.
buggyracer
11-May-07, 20:56
No cousins, aunts or in-laws for example? You will be one of the very few then. How many of your family are indirectly employed as a result of Dounreay.
Honestly non whatsoever.
The Dounreay visitors centre was one of the best visited attractions in Caithness. Shows how much else there is?
Fishing, ok so there is a small exclusion zone around Dounreay, but that does not stop the majority of fishermen.
At what cost on the grander scale of things everyother fishing port in close proximity to us is branding and producing there own seafoods, orkney crab/herring, lossie seafoods, the lsit goes on, somehow i dont think caithness atomic crab will fly off the shelf?
What? Dounreay has bought immense benefits to Caithness.
at what cost it has sooked up all the labour at govt funded wage levels and a cushy worksurroundings, and no real deadlines or targtes to meet, what chance does the local businessman have to compete with that?
Well there might have been something in that, but the local MP did fight to bring the LMFBR to Caithness, and it was not a forgone conclusion that it would come.
I believe that everybody knows the dangers of Alkali Metals.
You obviously have a poor grip of the facts and what the posts are about. Nobody is suggesting that the particles should not bee cleaned up, or even where they came from. The discussion between the various parties is what is the BEST way to carry out the clean up.
no its why the landowner should be seeking compensation, thats causing all the gripe, and please dont assume what i can or cannot grasp?
The county as a whole has benefited greatly from Dounreay. Admittedly there has not been the investment that Shetland has had, but then that is partly down to the difference between the private and public sector.
well imho its a bloody sin, like it or not we were test dummies.
The important thing is that Dounreay has shaped the comunity and kept the comunity together over the last fifty years.
How many young people are now leaving Caithness because there is no future? yes but what could have been here had dounray not arrived, i guess we will never know?
How many young people are now leaving Caithness because there is no future? yes but what could have been here had dounray not arrived, i guess we will never know?
What exactly could come up here? At the time the nuclear industry was a groundbreaking industry. New and inovative, employing the best minds in the country. To have the fast reactor experiment come to Caithness was a very real catch.
Although there is a problem with the particles, nobody is disputing where the particles have came from, that they should be cleaned up or who should pay for the clean up.
The difference in opinion is on how the particles should be cleaned up.
buggyracer
11-May-07, 21:35
What exactly could come up here? At the time the nuclear industry was a groundbreaking industry. New and inovative, employing the best minds in the country. To have the fast reactor experiment come to Caithness was a very real catch.
Although there is a problem with the particles, nobody is disputing where the particles have came from, that they should be cleaned up or who should pay for the clean up.
The difference in opinion is on how the particles should be cleaned up.
thats the million dollar question and one im afraid canot be answered, who knows what could have been had dounray not arrived, as all young able bodies were attracted to the place with the lure of money and jobs and all other idustries were left to pay the price.
you say "although there is a problem with particles" like is a noneity, small change i dont rally think it is?
its all thats going to be left of your beloved dounray, for how many years will they be washed ashore to poison our landscape once the doors in dounray have closed? No state of the art sports complexs for our children, no govt funding to build local businesses, no modern roads, just a few harmless particles washing up on our shores, once the atomic dream has died and left us!
anyway, we are not going to solve the problem on here, i enjoyed the debate, and im off to work (not in dounray) :)
ummm just to get this straight, nothing will come up here due to pollution?
we have one of the least polluted place in the world!
i would think its more because its well out of the way!
and on top of that.. in the last 2 years there has been a boom, and its just starting to build up.
if it were not for dunreay then there would have been no jobs for the majority of people.
its hardly dunreays fault that the fishing industry dried up.
or that the harbours have fallen into disrepair,
or that the young are leaving to find better lives.
we have no university up here to keep our children here. common sence tells you that when you go off to university, you will often settle in the area you have just spent several years in and have made friends and possibly found a partner.
I would suggest they skim the beach of all sand down to a depth of *6* feet, extract the radioactive particles from it, and put the rest back. They should probably do that periodically for years. I don't think as an engineering problem that would be particularly difficult. There is probably mining industry equipment that could be adapted to the task. Just think, if those particles were diamonds, how quickly would someone come up with a method for sorting them from the sand?
A seabed survey to determine what areas should be vacuumed up and similarly filtered is probably also in order. If that was done effectively the onshore problem would go away sooner.
That has actually been done on the Dounreay foreshore - at least once. I am not sure if such time and effort would be placed in finding them if they were diamonds - not sure it would be economically viable.
Doug Country
12-May-07, 11:01
they did not know about radiation and what it would do.
I think they did know about radiation, after all it was discovered about 55 years before they built Dounreay.
http://home.clara.net/darvill/nucrad/people.htm
I think they did know about radiation, after all it was discovered about 55 years before they built Dounreay.
http://home.clara.net/darvill/nucrad/people.htm
Thats being fairly pedantic.
At the time Dounreay was built they did not have as good an understanding of how to put the knowledge they had into practice. Hence DERE - Dounreay Experimental Reactor Establishment.
Dounreay was, and still in many ways is experiment. The country has benefited greatly from the work carried out at Dounreay and other UKAEA sites.
Something that has to be remembered is that the particeles found there way into the environment a long time ago. Admittedly, they should have not even then - but it is easy to look back and see mistakes. A lot has changed since then.
In 100 years time they will look back and say did they really burn fossil fuels the way they did - and that is a more pressing and major issue than that of the Sandside story.
The particles on Sandside beach are Caithness's hairshirt for the greed and destructiveness of post war UK colonialism.;):roll:
The particles on Sandside beach are Caithness's hairshirt for the greed and destructiveness of post war UK colonialism.;)
I think the hairshirt should be donated to Harwell ;)
There are two problems with trying to get your head around the subject of the radioactive pollution at Sandside beach. Both are moving targets as more information emerges from week to week.
The first is how do you evaluate the risk to human kind and the wider environment from the particles in a world which is full of competing hazards and the second linked problem is how do you calculate the extent of the deposit in the sea off Dounreay?
Dealing with the latter first the particles in the sea probably have the capabilty to replenish the beach contamination with the first storm after any sieving and clean up up operation and I believe that some have already been found as far away as Murkle and Dunnet. That seems to indicate that the distribution by tide and current since their original release is pretty extensive.
I therefore don't think we're ever likely to be able to remove the stuff completely anymore than you can eliminate ticks or midges from the environment. People visiting Sandside are just going to have to take precautions whatever that may consist of in the same way as they are being advised to protect themselves against ticks and the growing prevalence of Lyme disease which probably poses a much higher risk of damage to the health of the population in the north of Scotland.
O.K. with the benefit of hind sight if we had known that this would have been a result of hosting Dounreay in Caithness, and if we could have done so would we have rejected its arrival. Some how I don't think so for in my opinion the benefits of the Dounreay effect still outweigh the apparant damage incurred along the way. It remains to be seen however what historians will make of the episode.
So far as Mr. Minter is concerned I share the view of quite a few folks that it has become an obsession with the man which probably started out as an attempt to get compensation for loss or damage to his estate. But if he hadn't created such a fuss would anyone else have done so and would we know as much as we do today?
rockchick
13-May-07, 10:32
The first is how do you evaluate the risk to human kind and the wider environment from the particles in a world which is full of competing hazards and the second linked problem is how do you calculate the extent of the deposit in the sea off Dounreay?
They have done a risk assessment to human kind, and the worst case scenario they could come up with was the possibility of a constipated child ingesting a particle...which still would not provide a lethal dose!
Thanks for that perspective Rockchick.
We humans seem to relish a bogey man under the bed whether its the Sandside particles, CO2, or selections from the old testament. And of course politicians, control freaks and purveyors of belief systems sure like to press that button!
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