ASECTION of beach about 100 yards long was sealed off in Aberdeen yesterday after the area was found to be contaminated with radioactive material.
Environment watchdogs launched an investigation after the discovery.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) reported that it had found higher than normal levels of radioactivity in a small area of sand at the southern end of the beach, near the harbour wall.
The radioactive substance is understood to be naturally occurring, but not normally at this level of concentration in such a location. The substance is also found on offshore oil drilling equipment used in North Sea operations.
Sepa said the risk to the public was likely to be "negligible".
The organisation will monitor a wider area of the beach during the next few days to confirm the extent of the contamination.
Tidal movement will also be studied as Sepa investigates the source of the material.
A spokesman for Aberdeen City Council said that a small part of the beach would be closed to allow Sepa to conduct its investigation.
Production at a locally-based environmental services company was also halted yesterday as a precaution.
Scotoil Services was contacted in the afternoon about the substance.
A spokesman said: "We are obviously very concerned about this, but it is important to state that at this stage no link has been established between the finding of this material and the Scotoil Services operation.
"However, as a precaution we have suspended operations.
We shall, of course, be cooperating fully with Sepa and other authorities in their investigations."
The spokesman added: "We continue to have confidence in our procedures, which have been continuously reviewed and closely monitored now for more than 20 years. During this time there have been no issues reported."
Scotoil Services provides descaling, decontamination and disposal services for the oil and gas industry.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article