Dr. Ann McGarry:

I know the committee had correspondence last year with the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland regarding Hinkley Point. We advised that we had undertaken a series of investigations of the plants due to be built in the UK in coming years. That work was published in a report last year. Our investigation showed that the two EPRs that are planned to be built at Hinkley Point are unlikely to have any radiological impact in Ireland. Once they are operational we do not expect to see any consequence here, either in the terrestrial environment or in the marine environment.

As in the case of all other nuclear installations in the UK that have been of concern of us over the year, our main concern is with the potential for an accident at the site. We looked at five different accident scenarios that could occur at Hinkley Point. I stress that the likelihood of occurrence of these accidents is very rare and they range from one in 50,000 to one in 33 million per year. So they are extremely unlikely accidents. However, in the event of one of those unlikely accidents occurring, we found that food control measures would probably need to be introduced in Ireland. The extent of the contamination released from the accident would not be such that there would be immediate health impacts in Ireland, but there would be measurable levels radioactivity and for that reason food-protective measures would need to be implemented so that the food on sale in Ireland would be safe to eat.

Our estimate is that it is very unlikely that there could be an accident at this site but if there were, food control measures would need to be implemented.