Fears have grown over safety at Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant after photos emerged of cracked storage ponds.
The plant, just 34 miles from the island, has caused controversy since it was completed in 1997.
The photos, published by The Guardian newspaper, show two storage ponds containing hundreds of radioactive fuel rods at the plant with cracked concrete, seagulls bathing in the water and weeds growing around derelict machinery.
A spokesman for Sellafield Ltd said that the ponds, which are 60 years old, will not be cleaned up for decades.
Nuclear safety expert John Large told The Ecologist magazine: ‘The concrete is in dreadful condition, degraded and fractured, and if the ponds drain, the Magnox fuel will ignite and that would lead to a massive release of radioactive material. I am very disturbed at the run-down condition of the structures and support services. In my opinion there is a significant risk that the system could fail.
‘I would say there’s many hundreds of tonnes in there. It could give rise to a very big radioactive release.
‘It’s not for me to make comparisons with Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it could certainly cause serious contamination over a wide area and for a very long time.’
A spokesman for the Manx Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture (DEFA) said: ‘The Isle of Man Government receives regular reports on the safety of Sellafield’s nuclear waste stores, some of which date back to the earliest days of the nuclear age.’
Dr Paul McKenna, senior scientist at the Isle of Man’s Government Laboratory, which is part of DEFA, is one of the representatives on the nuclear site liaison committee which meets regularly.
Dr McKenna said: ‘Sellafield stores large volumes of hazardous nuclear waste and we receive regular reports regarding the storage ponds and silos. We have also been informed of how the structural integrity of the storage ponds and silos is being maintained, to give a sufficient number of years’ lifespan to allow the clean-up projects to be completed.
‘They would not comply with modern standards if they were built today, but they are being kept tolerably safe, as they must be, for as many years as it takes to remove and repackage all of the nuclear wastes they contain.’