Radioactive Discharges

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list all the non-nuclear industrial sites in Scotland making authorised discharges of radioactive substances into the atmosphere.

[holding answer 11 March 1988]: The following are authorised by the Scottish Development Department to discharge low level gaseous waste to the atmosphere:

National Semiconductors (UK) Ltd., Larkfield Industrial Estate, Greenock.

Crowther Arts Display Ltd., 5 Hawbank Road, College Milton North, East Kilbride.

Ferranti Ltd., Dunsinane Avenue, Dundee.

Organon Laboratories Ltd., Newhouse Industrial Estate, Newhouse, Lanarkshire.

ICI plc in respect of the Brae B platform in the North Sea.

In addition the South of Scotland Electricity Board is authorised to burn, at its power stations at Longannet and Inverkip, waste oil contaminated with trace amounts of radioactivity; authorisations are held also by Aberdeen and Dundee district councils permitting them to burn combustible low-level radioactive wastes in their waste disposal incinerators.In all the cases, the limits of discharge permitted by the authorisations are very low and the quantities of radioactivity being released to atmosphere are entirely negligible in radiological terms.

	Population (1986)1		Non-industrial Civil Service (1 April 1987)
Region	Number ('000s)	Percentage	Number2	Percentage
Scotland	5,121	9·3	50,214	10·1
Northern	3,080	5·6	31,359	6·3
North West	6,374	11·5	50,902	10·2
Yorkshire/Humberside	4,899	8·9	31,055	6·2
East Midlands	3,920	7·1	20,123	4·1
West Midlands	5,181	9·4	29,876	6–0
East Anglia	1,992	3·6	13,390	2·7
South East	17,264	31,3	195,826	39·4
South West	4,543	8·2	47,031	9·5
Wales	2,821	5·1	27,336	5·5
Great Britain	55,196	100·0	497,112	100·0