Uranium Dump
Posted: 24th May 2025
The Environment Agency has allowed a firm to dump three tonnes of uranium into one of England’s most protected sites over the past nine years, it can be revealed, with experts sounding alarm over the potential environmental impact of these discharges. Documents obtained by the Guardian and the Ends Report through freedom of information requests show that a nuclear fuel factory near Preston discharged large quantities of uranium – legally, under its environmental permit conditions – into the River Ribble between 2015 and 2024. The discharges peaked in 2015 when 703kg of uranium was discharged, according to the documents. Raw uranium rock mined from all over the world is brought to the Springfields Fuels factory in Lea Town, a small village roughly five miles from Preston, where the rock is treated and purified to create uranium fuel rods. According to the factory’s website, it has supplied several million fuel elements to reactors in 11 different countries. The discharge point for the uranium releases is located within the Ribble estuary marine conservation zone – and about 800m upstream of the Ribble estuary, which is one of the most protected sites in the country, classified as a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area (SPA) and a Ramsar site (a wetland designated as being of international importance). The government’s latest Radioactivity in Food and the Environment report, published in November 2024, notes that in 2023 the total dose of radiation from Springfields Fuels was approximately 4% of the dose limit that is set to protect members of the public from radiation. However, Dr Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, who was a scientific secretary to the UK government’s committee examining radiation risks of internal emitters, said that in terms of radioactivity, the discharges from Springfields Fuels were a “very large amount”. “I’m concerned at this high level. It’s worrying”, he said, referring specifically to the 2015 discharge.