Coastal dumps contain radioactive waste

The Government yesterday disclosed further evidence that radioactive waste was dumped in the sea off various British locations between the 1940s and 1970s.

The National Radiological Protection Board is to be asked to review information that radioactive materials were disposed of around the UK coast at Beaufort Dyke, the Clyde, the Forth, Liverpool Bay and possibly Morecambe Bay and the Humber Estuary. The amounts of radioactive material involved were "small" in radiology terms, the Government said.

Beaufort Dyke is a seven-mile munitions dump used by the Ministry of Defence since the 1920s in spite of its position near shipping lanes. Kate Watson-Smyth