ABSTRACT
Since 1952 low level liquid waste from the British Nuclear Fuels Limited nuclear re-processing plant at Windscale (now called Sellafield), Cumbria, U.K. has been discharged into the Irish Sea. The chemical composition and the amount of the waste has varied over the years as the plant being operated at Windscale has changed and as the number and types of nuclear reactors in the U.K. have changed. Monthly or annual limits, in Curies, of the quantity which may be discharged for each radionuclide are specified by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of the Environment. More details are given by Mauchline (1980), Smith, Parker & Kirby (1980), and an annual report on radioactivity in surface and coastal waters of the British Isles, the most recent of which is for 1980 (Hunt, 1982).
