Radiological fires on October 7th 2014

Hi,

We started getting quite high readings in the N.Lincs region during early October. We weren't logging and didn't think too much about it. This was because we didn't have much experience with our relatively new Geiger counters and we were also experiencing a period of high solar activity. Towards the end of October it was announced that there had been a fire at Dounreay power station on October 7th and that there had been a fire on a boat carrying radioactive material from Dounreay to Belgium. It turned out that there had been a low-level release of Tritium during the burning of a small quantity of Sodium metal.
The boat fire would not have emitted any radiation since:
"An oil platform has been evacuated after a ship carrying radioactive material caught fire and began drifting in the Moray Firth.

The MV Parida was transporting a cargo of cemented radioactive waste when a fire broke out in a funnel."

It would be interesting to know if anyone else in UK was getting elevated readings during October. Higher than normal readings were obtained using a pancake detector and an SBM-19 at a nearby location. Using an SBM-20 tube our first station is getting similar readings to those recorded in Leeds.

Regards,
tcall

Hi Paul
News reports from the Aberdeen Journal say the ship was carrying "a quantity of radioactive concrete in board". This news report from eorisk.com says "ship’s cargo was said to have been unaffected by the fire" Globe News 24 reports "The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said the Parida was carrying two containers called flasks each holding three 500-litre drums of intermediate level waste." and "The NDA said the ship and its cargo had been categorised at the lowest level of safety concern. It described Tuesday night's event as a "marine incident and not a nuclear incident"."
It sounds unlikely that this could have been the cause of the elevated readings.

James

Seems that October 7th, 2015 is still in the future, did you perhaps mean January 7th, 2015?

Hi
Date changed from 2015 to 2014.
Thanks for pointing this out.
tcall