SAFETY breaches at one of Britain’s biggest nuclear research stations resulted in hundreds of thousands of radioactive particles escaping into the environment, a former safety officer has revealed.

Highly radioactive waste was pumped into the sea and evidence of the pollution was covered up by managers who had a “reckless” disregard for public health, according to Herbie Lyall, a health physics surveyor at the Dounreay plant in Caithness for 30 years.

They come as the plant’s owner, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, is facing a possible criminal prosecution over a series of radioactive leaks. More than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from a public beach two miles west of the plant.

The latest find was on Friday when a stone contaminated with caesium-137 was recovered from another beach 20 miles from Dounreay. The authority has admitted that “at least several hundreds of thousands” of plutonium and uranium particles, each the size of a grain of sand, have been released from Dounreay.

A report by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, to be published next month, is expected to reveal leukaemia “clusters” around Dounreay.

The committee studied leukaemia cases within a 15-mile radius of nuclear power plants and military bases since the mid-1980s.

Lyall, who worked at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, has spoken publicly for the first time about his years there despite facing possible prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

In a dossier passed to The Sunday Times, Lyall claims: oHigh-level radioactive waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste. This liquid went into effluent pits which were then flushed into the open sea, sometimes on an incoming tide. oRadioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection. Two workers who were contaminated later died of cancer in their forties. oEffluent samples were collected for analysis using a wellington boot on a piece of string because sampling machinery was “a heap of rust”.

• One of the first discoveries of radioactive material on the public beach next to the plant was “covered up”.

• Radioactive containers left in dumps were not marked properly, leading to confusion over what they contained.

• A dumping pit used for years for “high-level” waste disposal was redesignated to be used as a temporary store for less hazardous material.

  Lyall had intended that his account should come to light only after his death. However, continuing concerns about the health risks from contamination around the nuclear plant have persuaded him to speak out.

  “There have been so many lies told to con the public about Dounreay that I feel I must put the record straight,” said Lyall.

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