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Cyclife is owned by EDF – itself largely owned by the French government. While the scrap metal facility, described below, is in the UK, there is a similar facility, also previously owned by Studsvik, which is located on the Mississippi River in Memphis, TN. The Memphis facility is owned by EnergySolutions. EnergySolutions’ Doug Kimmelman was a Trump fundraiser/large donor. Some downriver cities get their water from the Mississippi River. The addresses for the Memphis facility are 1790 Dock St and 2550 Channel Ave, Memphis, TN. https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/915311/download. The Memphis facility looks even worse than the Cumbrian one (see image on this blog post bottom). Where are the Memphis watchdogs?

From Radiation Free Lakeland:
“Cumbrian Radioactive Scrap Metal Plant Condemned by Nuclear Safety Group

Nuclear Safety Group Radiation Free Lakeland have written to Cumbria County Council urging action on what they allege are serious breaches at Cyclife’s radioactive scrap metal plant in Workington. The plant ‘free releases’ hundreds of tonnes of ‘clean’ metal onto the open market.

HISTORY
The plan to bring a Swedish radioactive scrap metal recycling plant to a previously nuclear free Business Park at Lillyhall near Workington was strongly opposed by local businesses. However it was given the go ahead by the regulators in 2008.

In 2016 EDF bought out Studsvik including the radioactive metal recycling facility near Workington. The name was changed to Cyclife. Joe Robinson, Cyclife’s managing director in the UK, said: “We’re really pleased to be delivering this important recycling contract for LLWR and Sellafield Ltd, which enables difficult items such as pond skips to be successfully processed alongside more routine scrap metal from the Sellafield site.

COMPLAINTS

One of the conditions of the original planning application from Cumbria County Council for the Metal Recycling Facility was that the containers should be water tight. Radiation Free Lakeland were alerted to something wrong at the site when a request was put in by Cyclife to the Environment Agency to increase liquid radioactive discharge resulting from ingress of water to leaky containers. Visiting the site on January 5th, Radiation Free Lakeland were shocked to see so many containers stacked up. These included some with labels reading ““Chapelcross Iodine Pipework for Processing” “Surface Contaminated Objects Magnox Ltd”

The campaign group say “Radioactive iodine is dangerous – and these containers are stacked just a couple of hundred metres away from David Woods Foods who provide national supermarkets with ready meals and Shortridge Laundry who provide laundry for hotels in the Lake District”.



The group’s letter of complaint to Cumbria County Council refers to the original Planning Permission and states:
The planning application points out that “the material would be transported in leak proof containers.” This has been breached.

Cyclife are now applying to the Environment Agency for disposal of liquid radioactive wastes to the sewer. Following a series of FOI questions to the Environment Agency we received the following : The subject of the permit variation is liquid waste generated by ingress of rainwater into containers and packages.

Therefore where the documents refer to incineration, it is this waste that is being referred to. Cyclife have applied to the EA to permit this liquid waste, instead of going for incineration, to be disposed of to sewer. No liquid waste as yet been incinerated or disposed of to sewer.

Cyclife could currently legally send the waste for incineration, but are not permitted to dispose of it to sewer and are storing around 2.5m3 of liquid waste on site. The incinerators which Cyclife may use (and use for other combustible waste) are Veolia at Ellsemere Port or Tradebe in Kent. Cyclife have stated that no liquid waste has been generated on site through the ingress of rainwater into packages for over 12 months since they made amendments to the vent port on the containers. Therefore they anticipate very low volumes, or indeed no, liquid waste to be generated going forward.“

If as the EA say, the vents on the containers are now watertight then Cumbria County Council should lobby the Environment Agency to ensure that there should be no planning consent for an increase in radioactive emissions to the sewer or incineration. The radioactive water should not even be there and should certainly not be ‘rewarded’ with a permit to pollute even further (is the same leaky situation happening with the hundreds of tonnes of “clean” radioactive metals entering the open market from Cyclife, who is checking?).

The increase in the permit for “disposal” to the sewer (or incineration) of 10 million bq from 500 is a huge jump and this should not be allowed to continue over the years to come. The Environment Agency suggest that the operators say this is a polluting one off “disposal” of liquid radioactive wastes to the sewer (this would end up down the Parton pipe line to the Solway) because of faulty containers which have now been fixed? “

There are several potential breaches of planning permission raised in the letter including the number of containers and containers being stacked in areas outside the planning specifications. A spokesperson for the group says “one of our photos sent to the Council shows containers marked “Quarantined” stacked in an illegal area and even overtopping the barbed wire fences. No wonder we were ordered to stop taking photos by Cyclife security even though we were on a public highway.”

Radiation Free Lakeland are planning to write to the Environment Agency urging them not to give consent to ever more radioactive discharge from what was a nuclear free site just a few years ago. Marianne Birkby founder of Radiation Free Lakeland notes “small wonder that the industry is congratulating itself on novel ways to get shot of nuclear wastes and just who is checking the tonnes of radioactive scrap metal being free released to the open market from this dangerous site – it looks out of control.”
ENDS
Contact
Marianne Birkby, Radiation Free Lakeland
LETTER and attachments to Cumbria County Council below
Nuclear Engineering International
http://web.archive.org/web/20171104143058/https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsstudsvik-plant-quietly-gains-permission

From: Marianne Birkby
Date: January 27, 2019
To: developmentcontrol@cumbria.gov.uk
Subject: COMPLAINT: CYCLIFE UK/EDF (formerly Studsvik) Lllyhall, Workington

Dear Cumbria County Council,

On behalf of nuclear safety group Radiation Free Lakeland, I would like to make a formal complaint about breaches of planning control.

COMPLAINT

CYCLIFE UK/EDF (formerly Studsvik) Lllyhall, Workington

CYCLIFE STATEMENT: The Cyclife MRF (Metal Recycling Facility) is designed to support the United Kingdom’s Low-Level Waste Strategy. It is a nuclear licensed site and environmentally permitted facility that is regulated by the ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation) and the EA (Environment Agency).

Note: it was passed by Cumbria County Council, controversially, on an area previously nuclear free.

Radiation Free Lakeland visited this site on the 5th January following concerns that Cyclife are looking to increase liquid radioactive emissions from the site.

We took several photos before being ordered to stop by a security guard “this is a licensed nuclear site.”

A. The photos showed containers stacked, with, we estimated at least 40 containers.
The planning consent diagram allows for 15 containers. Increasing Weekly traffic movements will be reflected by the increase in containers which the developers Environmental Impact Assessment says: The site will generate up to 6 HGV/Lorry movements to and from the facility per week (2 movements of waste and an estimate of 4 deliveries of standard operating consumables for the facility and office supplies). Car movements to and from the site would be up to 80 movements per day resulting from staff and site visitors entering and leaving the site.

When consent was given the planning officer did not consider traffic movements of radioactive materials significant (the Council’s description differs from the Developer’s EIA above )–

* Traffic: The site is accessible from Joseph Noble Road, an industrial standard access road with close links to the strategic highway network. The volume of traffic generated is expected to be about 2 – 3 container loads of metal imported to the site per week with one per week maximum of residues being removed to the LLW Repository, near Drigg. As such the volume of traffic is insignificant and the Highways Authority has raised no objection.

B. We were very concerned to see containers stacked up with the following labelling “Chapelcross Iodine Pipework for Processing” “Surface Contaminated Objects Magnox Ltd” Radioactive iodine is dangerous – and these containers are stacked just a couple of hundred metres away from David Woods Foods and Shortridge Laundry.

C. In the photographs we took before being ordered to stop it can clearly be seen that a container is stacked upon another container in an area not designated as a “container park’. The top container is dangerously teetering over the boundary fence (on the side adjacent to West Cumberland Engineering (The bottom container has ‘Quarantined” in big red letters ??) . This stacking and overlapping the fence of a nuclear licensed site in an area outside the remit of planning consent is clearly a breach of the consent :
“No radioactively contaminated material shall be treated or processed within the site other than within the buildings subject to this permission. No radioactively contaminated material shall be stored externally on the site except within the area outlined in red on plan ref: MRF-DRG-256- RevA. No uncontaminated material shall be stored or processed externally on the site except within the area outlined in red on plan ref: MRF-DRG-256-RevA. No decontaminated material shall be stored externally on the site except within the area outlined in green on plan ref: MRF- DRG-256-RevA.”

D. The planning application points out that “the material would be transported in leak proof containers.” This has been breached. Cyclife are now applying to the Environment Agency for disposal of liquid radioactive wastes to the sewer.

Following a series of FOI questions to the Environment Agency we received the following: The subject of the permit variation is liquid waste generated by ingress of rainwater into containers and packages. Therefore where the documents refer to incineration, it is this waste that is being referred to. Cyclife have applied to the EA to permit this liquid waste, instead of going for incineration, to be disposed of to sewer. No liquid waste as yet been incinerated or disposed of to sewer. Cyclife could currently legally send the waste for incineration, but are not permitted to dispose of it to sewer and are storing around 2.5m3 of liquid waste on site. The incinerators which Cyclife may use (and use for other combustible waste) are Veolia at Ellsemere Port or Tradebe in Kent. Cyclife have stated that no liquid waste has been generated on site through the ingress of rainwater into packages for over 12 months since they made amendments to the vent port on the containers. Therefore they anticipate very low volumes, or indeed no, liquid waste to be generated going forward. “

If as the EA say, the vents on the containers are now watertight then Cumbria County Council should lobby the Environment Agency to ensure that there should be no planning consent for an increase in radioactive emissions to the sewer or incineration. The radioactive water should not even be there and should certainly not be ‘rewarded’ with a permit to pollute even further ( is the same leaky situation happening with the hundreds of tonnes of “clean” radioactive metals entering the open market from Cyclife, who is checking?).

The increase in the permit for “disposal” to the sewer (or incineration) of 10 million bq from 500 is a huge jump and this should not be allowed to continue over the years to come. The Environment Agency suggest that the operators say this is a polluting one off “disposal” of liquid radioactive wastes to the sewer (this would end up down the Parton pipe line to the Solway) because of faulty containers which have now been fixed?

The arrogance of Cyclife over their leaky containers is staggering and should not be rewarded :

“An increase in the scope of Schedule 3 with allow Metal Recycling Facility to dispose of volumes of aqueous waste found within

containers and waste that is accepted on to site for treatment. Cyclife UK Ltd does not knowingly accept radioactive aqueous liquids for treatment or disposal, however, on occaision, wastes or packages do contain small amounts of aqueous liquids through rainwater ingress during storage of the packages on site”

So much for Cyclife’s planning application confidently describing “leakproof containers”. We hope that Cumbria County Council hold Cyclife to account for these breaches of planning consent.

Yours sincerely,

Marianne Birkby

On behalf of Radiation Free Lakeland”
[ENDS]

Studsvik, now EnergySolutions in Memphis Tennessee. Note rusty container to the right and radiation warning sign on fence: