IT is almost too quiet. Nestling around the ruins of the abbey where Mary Queen of Scots spent her last night on Scottish soil, the village of Dundrennan is a picture postcard of tranquillity. Tractors and local traffic pass through intermittently, cows graze in the fields, and occasionally residents walk past with their dogs.

With a small population and little political leverage it is, like most parts of the world preferred by the military , a quiet corner. But south-west Scotland is far from somnolent. Low-flying sorties are routine and the waters to the west are bus routes for nuclear- powered submarines.

Across the Solway Firth is the Sellafield nuclear reactor, Britain's most polluting civilian nuclear site. Radioactive particles from the plant have been blamed for polluting the Irish Sea and have been detected as far north as Norway.

But there is an even closer threat that has set nerves on edge along the Galloway coast . For the past 19 years the Ministry of Defence has test-fired depleted uranium shells at the Dundrennan firing range situated between the village and the sea. Somewhere out in the Solway Firth are more than 6000 discarded DU shells. The military insist there is no danger, but this does nothing to allay local worries.

"We moved here a year ago from Edinburgh to get away from pollution. Now we're not so sure," says May Halliday, whose canine charges are straining at the leash on a farm track running by the base perimeter. Her unease is felt among the 200 or so souls of Dundrennan whose fears over DU shells on their doorstep have been rewakened by the flurry of recent publicity. There have been renewed calls for the suspension of test- firing, due to begin again at the end of this month, and for another effort to be made to recover the spent shells on the sea bed. Life for the military would have been quieter if it were not for the activities of one man with a passionate conviction that the firing of DU shells at the range has been poisoning the local population for years.

Dan Kenny, a retired oilfield manager and a wartime bomb-disposal expert, has been described as obsessional and dismissed as a scaremonger for his constant campaign against DU shells. Even local environmentalists keep their distance - although they add a respectful qualifier. "He's overly fond of quoting his statistics, but the thing is that he may be right," warns one environmental campaigner. Now, international pressure is backing up his one-man crusade . "The locals know I'm telling the truth but our elected representatives accept all the lies and deceit from the MoD instead of hell-raising ," he says.

Pressure from Kenny and other activists led to demands for a public inquiry into the environmental effects of the test-firing at Dundrennan in the early 1990s. The request was rejected by the government but an independent assessment of the site was carried out. It concluded, as did subsequent annual studies by the MoD, that there was no danger.

Kenny disagrees. He says the range and landside targets are the real threat. Radio-active particles left over from the firing can disperse in the wind or enter the soil on which the cows graze. Kenny is driven by personal experience. His brother-in-law, who worked as a security man on the range, died from cancer. "They were there picking up shrapnel with their bare hands," says Kenny. "He went to bed in April and he never got up out of it again. He was as yellow as a duck's foot when he died and he was only in his fifties."

Kenny claims that five people who served as security men at the site have died from cancer-related illnesses, and that the same number of children died from leukemia in the area between 1992 and 1997. Local health officials say cancer rates are not statistically abnormal.

One veteran of the Sellafield campaign sympathises with Kenny. "People can say what they like about him but if I came along with a proposal to set up a business that involved hurling highly radioactive particles into the sea I know who would be dismissed as a crank."

There is annual monitoring of the marine and land environment by civilian and military sources but there has been no effort, other than one aborted attempt, to recover the fired shells.

"The real concern is the DU shells on the sea-bed. We don't know where they are or what is happening to them," says David Grant, of the local council's environmental health department. "There is concern about DU dust coming off the range but we haven't detected anything onshore or in the sea."As far as the military is concerned there is no detectable pollution and consequently no need to recover the shells. But Kenny vows he will not rest until he makes them change their mind about cleaning up the area.

"Some people say I'm trying to make Kirkcudbright a no go area - well I say no, I'm trying to make it safe for the future."