Paul Flynn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2014-04-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment has been made by (a) the RIMNET network and (b) other bodies of the possibility that the sand fallout across the British Isles from the Sahara desert has been contaminated by long-lived radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted by France in the Algerian Sahara in the 1960s.

Michael Fallon

The Radioactive Incident Monitoring Network (RIMNET) is the UK Government’s radiation monitoring and nuclear emergency response system which is operated on a 24 hour a day, seven days a week basis by the Met Office, on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Data from RIMNET has been inspected and shows no evidence of increased levels of radioactivity across the UK.

The Environment Agency (EA) undertakes a programme of far-field monitoring, away from nuclear sites, of radioactivity in air and rainwater. This programme involves constantly sampling air through filters in High Volume Air Samplers. Filters are changed on a weekly basis and subsequently analysed. Past Saharan dust events have not caused any detectable increase in radioactivity on the filters. Results for the changed filters on 31st March and 7th April should be available in the next few days. The results will be published as consolidated data in the annual Radiation in Food and the Environment (RIFE) report which is published jointly by a number of UK and devolved agencies. Previous RIFE reports are available here:

http://www.sepa.org.uk/radioactive_substances/publications/rife_reports.aspx.

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