Monitoring Radioactivity

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Dear Environment Agency,
Please let me know what the levels of radioactivity reaching the uk from Fukishima have increased to from prior to the accident.

1: Increase in radioactivity in the UK since Fukishima.
2: What action you are taking to protect the population.
3: Seeing America has ordered 14 000 000 Iodine tablets to be delivered by beginning of Feb, What action are you taking to Protect Us the People.

Yours faithfully,

Peter:Brewster

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

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Peter:Brewster left an annotation ()

Fukishima is the worst man made disaster to date, and still nothing in the press and No action being taken by the UK Gov We The People are being left to die from all the complications from radioactive poisoning.

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

Dear Peter

Thank you for your email regarding the Fukushima Accident

In March 2011 the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan was damaged by an earthquake and a tsunami. Radioactive material was released to air and sea, resulting in contamination of the environment.

Given the seriousness of the Fukushima accident, the Secretary of State (SoS) for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, asked the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to provide a report of the circumstances of the accident, with a view to identifying any lessons to be learnt by the UK nuclear industry. The ONR published the final report on 11 October.

A team of head office and regional staff, and staff from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, has worked closely with the Office for Nuclear Regulation during the development of the report. This has helped ensure that matters relevant to our role have been addressed.

There are 17 conclusions and 38 recommendations in the report. The majority of the recommendations are aimed at the nuclear industry, with some aimed at ONR themselves, the Government and the Nuclear Emergency Planning Liaison Group. There are no recommendations in the report which are aimed specifically at the Environment Agency. However we will play our part in response to many of them where they fall within our areas of interest, and where we normally work in partnership with others such as flood risk assessment and management, and emergency planning.

The ONR concludes that it sees no reason for curtailing the operation of nuclear power plants or other nuclear facilities in the UK, and that once further work is completed, any proposed improvements will be considered and implemented as part of the ONR's normal regulatory approach.

The full report can be found on the Office for Nuclear Regulation website

http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/fukushima/...

The written ministerial statement on the final report can be found on the Department of Energy and Climate Change website

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-r...

In the days and weeks following the accident we worked closely with partners, provided advice to government, monitored levels of radioactivity in the environment and provided guidance on the disposal of contaminated items imported from the affected areas in Japan.

We'll continue to work with ONR and others on the follow up work. For example, we will be supporting ONR on a review of flooding studies for nuclear sites, and we are involved in the national Nuclear Emergency Planning Liaison Group in its work to review our national arrangements in the light of learning from Fukushima.

The ONR intends to produce an 'implementation' report in about 12 months covering the outcome of the recommendations from its report.

I trust you find this information helpful

If you have any further questions please contact us on the number shown below

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National Customer Contact Centre
Part of National Operations
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Dear Enquiries, Unit,
Thank you for your prompt response and It is nice to see you are doing something, but my questions have not been answered,

1: What is the actual measurement since Fukishima. I want levels before the accident and the levels now. from the uk coast and air.

2: What action you are taking to protect the population.
Not from accidents of a similar type happening, but from the Radioactivity coming this way, that is going to poison us.

3: Seeing America has ordered 14 000 000 Iodine tablets to be delivered by beginning of Feb,
Are you ordering any iodine tablets for the population of the UK to Protect Us the People.

Yours sincerely,

Peter:Brewster

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Please note this is an auto reply message.

 

Thank you – The Environment Agency has received your email.

 

The Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations
state that a public authority must respond to requests for information
within 20 working days however we always aim to provide an answer as soon
as we can.  

 

For further information on what you can expect from us and our full
service commitment to you then please visit our website: 

[1]http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/abo...

 

Usually we make no charge for providing information. In some cases we may
make a charge for licensed re-use of our data. Where this is the case, we
will notify you in advance. Please see our website for more information
about charging:
[2]http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/bus...

 

Environmental Incident

 

If your email was to report an environmental incident i.e. pollution, fish
in distress, dumping of hazardous waste etc then please call our freephone
24 hour Incident Hotline

on 0800 80 70 60.   For more details about incident reporting please see
our website: [3]https://www.gov.uk/report-an-environment...

 

Kind Regards,

 

National Customer Contact Centre

 

Click an icon to keep in touch with us:-

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From April 2014 the Environment Agency website is closing. All our
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[9]www.gov.uk/environment-agency

To find out more please use the following link :-

[10]Environment Agency - We’re moving to the GOV.UK website

 

 

Information in this message may be confidential and may be legally privileged. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify the sender immediately, delete it and do not copy it to anyone else.

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We may have to make this message and any reply to it public if asked to under the Freedom of Information Act, Data Protection Act or for litigation. Email messages and attachments sent to or from any Environment Agency address may also be accessed by someone other than the sender or recipient, for business purposes.

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Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

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Dear Mr Brewster

Thank you for your enquiry regarding monitoring radioactivity following the Fukishima incident.

The Fukishima accident resulted in the release of radioactive material into the atmosphere. We focused our radiological programmes on direct monitoring of air, rain and food to check for radioactivity from the accident and detected the arrival of very low levels of radioactivity from Japan during March and April 2011. Levels of radioactivity were about 2000 times lower than those that reached the UK from Chernobyl. Our work showed the value of our monitoring programmes to respond to an accident. The Health Protection Agency made use of all the monitoring data we collected to confirm that levels of radiation posed no risk to public health.

The annual Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report (RIFE report) brings together the results of the UK wide monitoring programme that we have conducted in 2012 alongside the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency.

This RIFE 2012 publication reports that:

The public’s exposure to radiation around each nuclear site in 2012 was below the legal limit
radioactivity in food is within safe levels
concentrations of radionuclides in food and the environment around nuclear licensed sites were similar to previous years
these low concentrations continue to decrease at many sites as a result of changes in discharges to the environment
levels of radioactivity in the UK resulting from the Chernobyl accident have fallen significantly. In 2012 the Food Standards Agency removed all controls on consumers eating sheep meat.

The two RIFE reports were published subsequently and are attached

RIFE-17 is for 2011 and in chapter 8 (overseas incidents) covers the Chernobyl legacy and Fukushima
RIFE-18 is for 2012 and retains chapter 8. But we did not find anything that year from Fukushima though Chernobyl lingers on.

Both of these reports are in the public domain and can be found by internet search engine.

Regarding your query about potassium iodate tablets. In the UK the tablets are pre-distributed to residents within the Detailed Emergency Planning Zone (DEPZ), including schools and hospitals etc., as they provide greater protection from radioactive iodine if they are taken just before an exposure occurs. The Environment Agency would not be involved in the pre stocking of Iodine tablets however Public Health England and the Health protection Agency should be able to provide you with further information on this. There contact details are below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...

http://www.hpa.org.uk/

I trust this information will prove useful.

If you require any further information, please do let us know and we will be happy to assist.

Kind Regards
Katherine Hughes
Customer Service Advisor
National Customer Contact Centre - (Part of National Operations)

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