Radioactivity in the environment is both a focus for public anxiety and the subject of much NERC research. Nigel Bell describes the activities of the NERC watchdog on radioactive issues.

There is no environmental issue which attracts more public concern than radioactivity. I might argue that this concern is misplaced, when dispassionately compared with the risks arising from other environmental hazards, but public perception drives policy and legislation. In the eyes of much of the public, the nuclear industry has regressed from the saviour of the world in the 1950s and 1960s with the promise of unbelievably cheap electricity (cheaper than water), to a monster which can cause global contamination and leukaemia in children. Such concerns have been heightened by nuclear accidents such as Windscale in 1957, Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986. There are also concerns over the growing amount of nuclear waster coming from numerous sources, including laboratories and hospitals. All these issues have resulted in major expansion of research into the behaviour of radioactive materials in the environment.

The NERC watchdog

NERC has been prominent in carrying out and sponsoring research into radioactivity in the (semi) natural environment. Its in-house research programme began in the 1970s. The Co-ordinating Group on Environmental Radioactivity (COGER) was formed in 1978, as a vehicle for information exchange and co-ordination of research on environmental radioactivity. Initially COGER operated entirely within NERC, but in 1981 its terms of reference were changed to embrace the wider research community, ensuring co-operation and co-ordination between NERC institutes, universities and organisations such as the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the National Radiological Protection Board.

The terms of reference for COGER include:

Organising an annual open meeting involving all those concerned with research on environmental radioactivity.

Co-ordinating communication between research groups involved in basic and directed research in environmental radioactivity.

A forum for debate

The first COGER open annual meeting was held in 1982. The numbers attending rose gradually each year, and then mushroomed after the Chernobyl accident in 1986, which brought many new players into the field. I particularly remember the Westlakes meeting which I chaired in 1994: it had the unusual distinction of being held in a theatre, where if I leaned backwards on the stage I found myself in the 1940s sitting room of Sailor Beware!

Since 1989 the annual meeting has included the COGER Lecture, given by a prominent outside speaker and followed by a convivial dinner. The lectures are aimed specifically at the younger members of the audience, and give an overview of an aspect of environmental radioactivity, generally with a historical perspective. The most recent lecture, by Professor Elis Holm, University of Lund, was on Four decades of radioecological concentration processes. Professor Holm described the unexpected and almost accidental discovery, some 30 years ago, that radioactivity from bomb fallout was being concentrated at the top of Arctic food chains. He also showed evidence that plutonium levels increase from the equator to the North Pole in marine surface waters.

For many years it has been our policy to give research students the opportunity to present their findings in a friendly open atmosphere, which is achieved annually in the presence of the experts in the country on environmental radioactivity. The annual COGER meeting remains the only regular forum in the UK where scientists working on environmental radioactivity can meet to give papers and interact informally. Our remit remains highly multi-disciplinary, with papers at the 1996 meeting covering marine geochemistry, coastal wetlands and fresh water, terrestrial ecosystems; migration of buried nuclear waste, deposition and interception of radionuclides, response to nuclear emergencies, and developments in radio analysis. This spread of interests is reflected in the unusually wide range of organisations represented at the 1996 annual meeting, with delegates from four NERC institutes, five governmental or quasi-governmental organisations, 14 universities, two independent research institutes, and four private or state-controlled companies.