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Since its relaunch in February 2008, the NIS website has seen a growth of 300% in site visits, so clearly we're doing something right. 
Westwood House, 30 Westwood Road,
Southampton SO17 1DN, Britain
tel/fax:+44 (0)2380 554434 m: 07880 557035
e-mail:scans@nuclearinfo.org.uk www.nuclearinfo.org
Monitoring of
Royal Navyand Southampton City Council
PITSdistribution Exercise in Hythe
18thNovember 2008
Background
The RoyalNavy (RN) insists on using Southampton Docks for nuclear submarines,despite requests from Southampton City Council (SCC) not to do so.The risk of a reactor accident may be small, but SCANS argues that itis an unnecessary risk. There is no need for submarines to use amajor commercial dock when there is a military dock close by atPortsmouth RN Dockyard. It represents a risk to shipping, ferries,leisure yachts, both small and international industries and a verylarge multi-cultural community. REPPIR, the European directive onRadiation Emergency Public Preparedness Information Regulationsrequires nuclear operators to hold off-site emergency exercises everythree years. This Exercise, to test the naval ratings' ability tofind every house and business in a given area in readiness to be ableto distribute PITS - Potassium Iodate Tablets, was done in advanceof the full Sotonsafe Exercise planned for 14thJanuary 2009. Only three of the seven distribution areas in Hythewere checked, and no Exercise in Southampton City area was carriedout.
SCANSobserved the exercise in order to see if such a distribution isfeasible and if all residents and workers in the designated areawould have been reached in the event of an accident exposing them toradiation. We distributed leaflets to explain what was going on, andresidents and commuters using the ferry received these with interest.
Observations
Three teams,each consisting of a naval rating and naval observer with two SCCmonitors were dispatched from Hythe Police Station just after 09.00to walk the route of the central area, the residential area west ofthe Marina and the Southampton Road area.
Walk 1
This groupwent off first but did not get started until 10.09 and took 1 hr 35minutes. This section covered central Hythe, including private andsocial housing in Shaw Road and St. John's Road. The very large newShipyard Estate proved extremely difficult to navigate and numberswere hard to correlate. One of the monitors from Hants CC (anex-policeman), considered 20-25 minutes more time was needed for theExercise. He was very thorough, going into small businesses andsearching out addresses in a maze of lanes and cul de sacs with amixture of cottages, new houses, small businesses and yards. Staff atan old people's Day Centre was contacted but this was discovered tobe a pre-distribution point. The shopping area was not checked as itwas considered too disruptive to business. SCC and RN personnel haddifferent versions of the street plan making it difficult to tick offthe properties located, and requiring the Exercise group frequentlyto stop and confer. It was a hopeless task.
Walk 2
This sectionstarted at the Recreation Ground near Hythe Marina, covering theJones Lane area of residential streets. The warden at Ewart Courtsheltered housing accommodation offered assistance which was at firstrefused but was then taken up when the team were unable to locate aproperty. People looked on from inside their homes and one residentsaid that she had an emergency leaflet to hand. The team werethorough, communicated with each other well and persevered to ensurethat houses were not missed when their two lists did not agree. Therewas confusion over whether or not a Doctor's surgery was included.Even with accurate lists, it took time to locate some addresses. Thissmall section of Hythe took 1.45 hours to walk.
Walk 3
This sectionappeared to be the lower left hand 'square' area of the 2km zonemap. It was quite short though hilly, starting at about 9.10 andfinishing about 10.25. Properties were all houses and bungalows - noflats. The roads were as follows:
Malwood RoadWest (starting at one of the pre-allocation centres at no 1, LittleShipmates Nursery); Michaels Way; Douglas Way; Dale Road (onlybetween Hollybank Road and Lower Mullins Lane); Lower Mullins Lane(from Dale Road northwards only); Southampton Road westwards;Mountfield and a track up to Depedene and the houses back alongSouthampton Road (right hand side only) to Jones Lane. One man with aclipboard did one side of the road and two women, one with aclipboard, did the other. Houses did not need close examination asthe numbers and letter-boxes were fairly obvious. The team did go upsome of the long drives in the rural sections.
Conclusions
Based onthis exercise, SCANS considers it highly unlikely that everyonedown-wind of the submarine would be reached by PITS distributionteams in the event of a real radiation emergency, when neither SCCstaff or the police would accompany the naval ratings.
Theprofessionals familiar with finding awkward addresses are Royal Mailpostal deliverers, but they did not assist and don't seem to havebeen consulted. Clearly properties change all the time and a thoroughupdating for the whole city would be needed every year to keep listsup to date. Even then, some would be missed. SCANS considers that thesame people would need to practice their routes every three months tobe able to provide a safe level of cover in cooperation with aneighbourhood warden in each street. A continuous programme isnecessary for this plan to work. In the event of an accident, agreater number of RN would not necessarily improve the cover as onlythe easy and obvious addresses would be located. Ratings would be ata disadvantage when under pressure, wearing protective Chemical,Biological, Radiological, Nuclear (CBRN) suits and withoutsupervision, as SCC and the police are not cleared to enter acontaminated area. The distribution of preventative medication hasmedical implications and should not be delivered by sailors. Thischarade is a waste of council resources of time, energy and money.Unless health issues and the PITS distribution are taken moreseriously, it will be inappropriate and random. Even if the MoDunderwrites the legal liability of the City Council, the councilshould not be party to causing unnecessary suffering through misuseof PITS. It is time for SCC to seek an independent legal opinion onthe question of whether this risk is justifiable. 25thNovember 2008
