As I noted a few weeks ago, some of our environmentalist friends were on their best behaviour during the public inquiry into Dart Energy's proposed expansion of their coalbed methane operations in Airth, Scotland, with Friends of the Earth's evidence including none of the wild claims that they have made as part of their campaign of scaremongering.
With the hearings for the inquiry now over, normal service seems to have been resumed, with the Herald's Rob Edwards (who else?) reporting the latest batch of more or less bonkers scaremongering.
Evidence submitted to the inquiry by Dart says that “predicted annual discharges” of untreated water from the development could contain up to 1.7 billion becquerels of radioactivity. The radioactivity comes from uranium and thorium deposits deep underground, and is flushed out by mining operations.
Now anti-nuclear local authorities have pointed out that this is much higher than the annual discharges from the Rosyth Royal Dockyard. An official report from UK government regulators put Rosyth’s liquid discharges in 2012 at 0.6 billion becquerels of radioactivity.
The claims come from Dr Ian Fairlie, a retired civil servant specialising in regulation of the nuclear industry, who seems to be spending his declining years in hiring himself out as a consultant to environmental groups on radiation matters. His list of publications makes for interesting reading, particularly in view of his earlier employment.
If you read on in the Edwards article, you discover that Fairlie's claim is made on the basis of the radioactivity levels in untreated discharges from the wells, despite Dart already having a treatment plant on site. So if I understand the allegation correctly, it is that if Dart did things differently from the way are doing them (and plan to continue to do them) there might be a minor problem.
Can't say fairer than that, can you?