Highly radioactive materials are regularly carried on Britain's railways. Most of the traffic consists of used (or spent) fuel rods from nuclear power stations en route to Sellafield, to be reprocessed. Almost all the nuclear power stations are on the railway system and have their own sidings. If they don’t, the fuel rods are then sent by road to the nearest railway loading point. The fuel rods contain various elements that are highly radioactive and remain so for lengths of time ranging from a few years to tens of thousands of years.

Each nuclear power station on average produces enough material for one flask per week, although they may wait until they have a couple of flasks before running a train. At certain key junctions, such as at Willesden or Cricklewood in north west London, flasks may be kept in a goods yard for some hours, waiting for others coming in, on another line, so that they can be made up into one train. The trains also sit in sidings at places such as Stratford and Hither Green in the London area and Rugby, either for crew changes or to wait for the rush hour commuter traffic to die down.

The rods are sealed up in white-painted containers called flasks. Some are cube-shaped, some cylinders. Since the rods are not only radioactive but also produce heat continuously, they are submerged in water to keep cool. The flasks are very heavy, as they are made of steel and lead-lined in order to stop as much of the radiation as possible from escaping. Each flask is carried on flatbed railway carriages. One, two or occasionally three, flasks make up a short train. They are not usually mixed in with any other sort of freight.

The flasks are designed to survive an 800°C fire for 30 minutes and a 9 meters drop onto concrete. In 1984, in a spectacular demonstration, an old diesel locomotive was crashed at 100 mph into a flask. The flask survived and the locomotive was completely destroyed. However these tests are not entirely satisfactory. Most railway viaducts are more than 9 meters high, fires involving petrol tankers would burn at more than 800°C, and on fast main lines the collision speed of two trains could be well over 100 mph.

A high-speed head-on collision or derailment could damage the flask and allow the radioactive contents, including the water in which the rods are submerged, to escape. There is no risk of an actual nuclear explosion but the radioactive material can contaminate the ground, blow about by the wind or spill into a stream, this could lead to many deaths, mostly from cancer, over many years. At the very least, a large area and probably thousands of people would have to be evacuated.

At least some radioactivity escapes continuously from the flasks. Even though the flasks are checked and decontaminated at Sellafield, railway staff are still warned not to work close to them for any length of time. Radioactive traces have been found on railway sidings where they are regularly handled. Recently, flasks from Hinckley Point in Somerset were found to be well over the permitted radiation level and others from Germany were so seriously radioactive that they have had to be withdrawn for modification and the traffic suspended.

Every week, communities up and down the country are put at risk from potential radioactive contamination as these trains trundle through our cities, towns and villages. There are no police or security personnel on board and there are no local plans in place to deal with an emergency. If a nuclear waste train was involved in a terrorist attack, tens of thousands of people could be exposed to cancer causing radiation and whole regions might have to be evacuated.

No nuclear freight is allowed to travel through the Channel Tunnel any longer due to the risk of fire with extreme temperatures exceeding 800°C. So why are they allowed to go through Hampstead Heath and Primrose Hill tunnels in London?

For a full copy of the report by John Large & Assisiates (commissioned by Greenpeace) click here…