FORMER Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to demand that defence chiefs “act now” over radioactive contamination at a Scots beach.
Mr Brown will meet Defence Secretary Philip Hammond to discuss the contamination at Dalgety Bay, Fife, on March 26.
The meeting will go ahead just days before the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is set to confirm the beach as the UK’s first radiation-contaminated site.
The foreshore at Dalgety Bay is contaminated with radioactive particles © Deadline News
And Mr Brown said he plans to ask the MoD to take full responsibility for the dumping of the radiation on the site, and will ask it to fund a clean-up operation for the site.
The beach has been closed off since November last year due to pollution thought to be from radium used in military aircraft parts which were dismantled in the area.
The MoD said it had found and removed 83 radioactive particles from Dalgety Bay in Fife following a survey in January.
The former Prime Minister will demand action over the contamination © Deadline News
But Sepa have said that plans set out by the MoD are inadequate and would need to be improved vastly if the area is not to be designated as permanently radioactive.
Mr Brown, said: “I hope to meet the new head of Sepa, Professor Jim Curran, in the next few days, in advance of my meeting with the Minister for Defence.
“I have discussed with the community council chairman what we do next and we are agreed that among the issues that remain outstanding – if we are to remove the radiation risk in Dalgety Bay – is that there is as yet no timetable for, nor agreement on, funding of remediation work.”
The contamination is caused by radium from aircraft parts dumped near the beach © Deadline News
He continued: “The MoD has set out a three-stage process they intend to take. Stage one and two of the investigation plan does not cover any remediation work, whilst stage three, for which there is no timing whatsoever, also fails to address the question of remediation work.
“So the key request to the MoD that I will take to the meeting with the Secretary of State on March 26 is, will the MoD agree to fund and accept full responsibility for remediation work as soon as is possible.
“It is in no one’s interest for this are of Fife to become the first area in Britain to be designated as an area of radioactive contamination and the MoD must therefore take responsibility and act now.”
