Army site at Stirling

Background

Remediation of the former Army site at Stirling. The site is situated along the tidal zone of the River Forth and has been occupied by the MOD since the late 19 century. Since the second world war, the site has mainly been used for the repair of Army equipment. This included the luminising of military equipment with radium. Waste from this process, in keeping with the practices of the time, was burned and buried on the site, principally by dumping on to the river flood plain. The dump sites were then made up to the higher level, increasing the useable size of the site. The contamination was located as outcroppings on the side of the banking, which proved to represent larger seams of buried activity at depth within the made ground.

Note the problems of removing "seams" of buried contamination from below 6 m of clean overburden. The excavation is stepped for bank stability. Note also the presence of "red blaes" in the fill material. This waste from the oil industry has a high natural radioactivity which caused problems in determining whether the remediation end point had been achieved.

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