RADIOACTIVE discharges from a British nuclear processing plant are having a bigger impact on the Arctic than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, according to a report published today.
Data compiled by Canadian researchers showed that a "plume" of radioactive sea water from the Sellafield plant had reached the Arctic Circle in northern Canada at a depth of 200 metres, according to New Scientist magazine.
Radioactivity in the water was "an order of magnitude greater than the background level from nuclear weapons fall out", Mr Mike Bewers of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, eastern Canada told the magazine.
A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels, which runs the Sellafield plant, said the amount of radioactivity in the sea did not have a harmful effect.
"A recent report from the independent Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland says that radioactivity levels in the Irish Sea are falling and now so low as to be `dwarfed' by naturally occurring radioactivity," he told New Scientist.