I can’t believe I have only just come across this one.
I have outlined the disastrous Albright and Wilson factory at Portishead in THIS POST.
The decommissioning of this site resulted in AW being prosecuted for enriching radioactive phosphorus, and admitted five offences under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and yet the serial liar PR man Peter Bloore failed to mention this in a future Albright World piece. In 1990, a major fire saw many barrels of p4 going up in smoke. Clearly, the place was a doomed operation in production and in dismantling.
I have looked at the decommissioning operation of the zoned areas of the site in an FOI response request HERE.
A Bristol Evening Post article of 16th May 1997 however reveals a new off site threat that came from this factory and its activities. At this time, the plant was being decommissioned according to the reports received during the FOI request. This obviously was both a failure of the company and those carrying out the works, including their consultants who were shite. At the same time as this work was ongoing a former Royal Navy Yacht, the history of which I will look at further on in this post was being converted into a rich man’s plaything. However, workers on the vessel were complaining of being burnt and also that the fibre glass hull was being damaged by chemicals from the AW factory.
The millionaire owner , unnamed, was considering taking legal action against the polluters!
It is revealed in further columns that the former HMS TENACITY had been hit by escapes of phosphorus, though I suspect this was a mixture of phosphorus vapour and phosphorus pentoxide.
It is typical that AW refer to the size of the emission rather than the fact they should not have released anything off site at all. I have course had this same bullshit from their management regards the “small amounts ” of P4 that were in rattlechain lagoon, that were also “small amounts” found in the birds poisoned by their fucking chemical within that. They lie with a straight face and a “grin” of a horny nun below the cassock.
I suspect that this factory operated in exactly the same way as at Oldbury at this time in that as an EA report in 1997 noted, senior manager’s bonusses were linked to environmental performances. If you could pin the blame on weather, acts of God, or anything then they would try it on. You could also of course be rewarded for attempting to cover them up.
A reminder of how they had failed to stop phosphorus escaping off site before.
The following year, and still during the life of the decommissioning works, the Clevedon Mercury article of 23rd July 1998 told that the conversion of the yacht had been put off altogether and the ship was now to be scrapped!
HMS TENACITY
This vessel was built in Portsmouth by Vosper Thorneycroft in 1969. It was an experimental fast patrol boat which eventually was taken on by the Royal Navy three years later. There is more on its history HERE. A piece in The Dover Express dated 2nd August 1974 shows it in its prime billed as “the fastest ship in The Royal Navy”. At this point it was based in Dover. There is also some irony that the vessel was used for “fisheries protection” duties. Albright and Wilson of course were adapt at poisoning fish around this time with white phosphorus in their doomed Long Harbour Venture.
There has to be a great deal of irony in all of these connections.
