Mr. RobertsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the volume and nature of radioactive discharges into the Firth of Forth from(a) Torness power station and (b) Rosyth royal dockyard; and what arrangements are made for monitoring and recording such discharges and any residues in the marine environment.
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonDetails of the quantity of waste discharged and of the environmental monitoring undertaken and of the results obtained are published in a series of bulletins issued by the Scottish Development Department. These are available in the Library.
The operators are required, as a condition of the authorisation, to sample and analyse all discharges, to 6W keep records and to send a copy of the records to Her Majestys' industrial pollution inspectorate. Check samples of the liquid waste are periodically taken on behalf of the Inspectorate and analysed.
A condition of the authorisation is that environmental monitoring as specified by the Secretary of State must be undertaken by the operator. To provide an independent check on the operators results a separate sampling and analyses programme is undertaken by the inspectorate. The Torness nuclear power station authorisation relates to dscharges of liquid waste into the North sea.