How Windscale’s belief in "harmless radiation" caused the disaster
Over-confidence, lax standards and a cover-up culture created world's first nuclear disaster at the underfunded Cumbrian atom plant
John Dunster’s air of reckless frankness astonished his audience.
It was September 1958 and the head of health and safety at Windscale nuclear plant was addressing the International Atomic Energy Agency conference in Geneva.
Just months before, a disastrous fire at the intensely secretive Cumbrian atom bomb facility had spewed twelve kilogrammes of uranium into the Cumbrian countryside. Only good luck and the bravery of workers had averted nuclear meltdown that could have killed thousands of people across Europe.
Now Dunster admitted deliberately pumping vast amounts of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea. He told his colleagues that the release was “ part of an organised and deliberate scientific experiment”.
The idea was to discharge “fairly substantial amounts of radioactivity” to find out how much nuclear contamination would end up in fish, seaweed and on shorelines. A large release into the sea was much better than a small-scale laboratory experiment, he beamed.
Dunster's extraordinary openness about Windscale's motives for polluting the sea was disarming. "Not the least of the attractions of the sea as a dumping ground has been the lack of administrative controls," he admitted.
He denied the discharge was dangerous because: “Almost everything put into the sea is either diluted...or broken down...or stored harmlessly on the seabed. Most of the objects which ultimately do find their way to the shore are harmless and a considerable source of pleasure to children,” he added.
He denied the discharge was dangerous because: “Almost everything put into the sea is either diluted...or broken down...or stored harmlessly on the seabed…”
The remarks about “harmless” radiation seem incredible now and he later claimed he had been quoted out of context. But his confession caused a worldwide controversy that still reverberates today. Whether he intended to or not, he seemed to have revealed an extraordinarily casual attitude to risk that critics claim was the trademark of Windscale’s sixty years of operation.
Windscale is notorious because it has dumped more radioactivity into the sea than any other nuclear plant in the world. Its atomic fingerprint can be detected in oceans across the globe. This kind of ocean dumping was banned in 1993. But it’s Britain’s toxic legacy to the world that cannot be taken back.
The admission sparked outrage for years in Ireland. Speaking in the Dail as late as 1984, the Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey accused the British of “criminal negligence” and “a massive cover up”. He demanded the perpetrators of the “ominous, dangerous scandal” be sent to jail.
The Windscale executive’s remarks about “harmlesss” radiation seem incredible now. He seemed to reveal an extraordinarily casual attitude to risk at the atom plant. Later he claimed to have been quoted out of context. But his words haunted him for the rest of his life.
But Dunster’s gaffe did not end his career. He went on to become, rather ironically, the head of the UK Radiological Protection Board and was knighted. Dunster advised the British Government on the Chernobyl disaster. But he was haunted by the furore his remarks caused until his death at the age of 84 in 2006. His naive honesty contrasts sharply with the decades of secrecy, misinformation, cover-ups and, occasionally, lies that have normally shrouded the Windscale plant’s operations.
He made his startling statement at a time when Windscale workers were still fuming at being blamed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan for causing the fire in Windscale’s reactor core on the night of 10 October 1957. The incident sent a mist of radioactive uranium up one of the plant’s 400-foot chimneys and out into the surrounding Cumbrian countryside - and it almost erupted into a much bigger tragedy.
Rank-and-file staff were enraged by the Premier’s statement because they knew it was only the heroic action of workers led by deputy general manager Tom Tuohy that saved the complex from descending into a full meltdown. That would have seen, not a few kilograms, but fifteen tonnes of uranium fuel vaporising and vomiting a toxic cloud across Europe with potentially thousands of deaths.
A rapid internal inquiry decided the Prime Minister’s order for plutonium production to be massively increased was the true cause of the emergency. This had overstrained the already-troubled Windscale core, setting uranium cartridges alight. Tuohy had braved massive doses of radiation in his ultimately successful attempt to extinguish the inferno in which he ordered the reactor to be flooded with water and have its air vents shut.
But Macmillan banned the publication of the hurriedly-prepared but truthful secret report. He needed Windscale to produce enough plutonium to build a convincing atomic bomb. This was necessary in order to persuade the US to accept the UK as a partner in weapons building. That, Macmillan hoped, would re-start the transatlantic sharing of nuclear secrets. But he feared if news of the Windscale fire emerged, Congress would block the deal.
So, instead of issuing the honest inquiry report, he ordered the type to be smashed and issued an official white paper. This contained an entirely different verdict. It blamed an “error of judgement” by the Windscale workers for triggering the fire which so far is estimated to have killed a hundred people and caused more than 260 cancer cases.
Windscale’s culture of duplicity damaged public trust more than the plant’s erratic safety record. Today, polls say support for atom-generated power is rising modestly among men thanks to the energy shortage caused by the Ukraine war. But faith is still weak among women. The British Government is struggling to rebrand nuclear power as “green” in an attempt to revive private sector investment. But entrepreneurs say the industry’s negative public image and doubts about the long-term costs of handling nuclear waste are sapping confidence.
A wide range of investigations by historians and scientists has shown the problem is rooted in the culture of furtiveness and delusion that was Windscale’s hallmark. This has shattered public confidence. Apart from almost unbelievable examples of complacency, back-of-an-envelope planning and baffling unpreparedness, the plant’s creators imposed not one, but three, layers of secrecy which only encouraged the errors, according to an analysis produced by Harry Roberts at Liverpool University called “Sellafield and British Nuclear Culture, 1945-1992”.
Windscale training encouraged workers to take a nonchalant attitude to the risks, pointing out how we are all surrounded by background radiation which posed no threat, such as luminous alarm clocks.
Firstly, Ministers treated Windscale as a weapons plant and imposed wartime levels of military secrecy. This was deemed justified because of the seductive ideology that the complex would usher in a nuclear utopia that would transform British life. An almost religious fervour grew among the staff. Bosses were seen as an unchallengeable atomic priesthood. One local figure glowingly recalled: “the senior management at Sellafield then were giants of men.”
Secondly, State control of information suppressed discussion of negative issues such as pollution and the destruction caused by nuclear bombs while emphasising positives such as isotopes for hospitals.
But this system also presented Windscale’s Calder Hall plant falsely as being dedicated to generating virtually cost-free electricity. This was a lie. In reality, it was another plutonium factory which produced little power. When it did, the electricity cost £232 per kilowatt hour, seven hundred times what it costs today.
Thirdly, nuclear power was promoted as a safe job of the future compared to “dangerous” heavy industry such as coal mining and steel production, which is ironic considering what was going to happen.
The result was many staff understood very little of the true nature of their jobs. One worker told interviewers that “you had an idea, but not ... scientifically you didn’t.”
Academics say it is increasingly clear that, rather than enhancing safety, the culture of secrecy undermined it. Curbs on internal discussion hindered staff from learning important information. As nuclear historian Dr Peter Bacon Hales wrote, workers were not allowed to speak of their work to one another, only to their superiors, who could only converse with their superiors and so on, “until finally the two superiors turn out to be the same person.”
Workers referred to parts of the plant in code as “the dancefloor”, “the cactus”, “the football pitch”, and “the cricket pitch”. The result was many staff understood very little of the true nature of their jobs. One worker told interviewers that “you had an idea, but not ... scientifically you didn’t.”
The internal wartime culture also encouraged a nonchalance about danger. “Compared with some of the things people had been through during the war, this wasn’t much. There wasn’t any apparent serious risk,” one interviewee told the oral history Project “Sellafield Stories”. The pseudo military discipline meant that if scientists told staff an area was safe, they saw little reason to object.
A 1954 Economist article reflected this atmosphere of bravado, declaring: “men… are finding that quite heavy doses of radiation can be harmless.”
Any staff nerves were mitigated by the issuing of a primitive blown-up PVC hazmat suit. Trainers encouraged worker nonchalance about the risks, pointing out how we are all surrounded by background radiation which posed no threat, such as luminous alarm clocks, glow-in-the-dark watches, Cornwall beach pebbles while Aberdonians built their houses out of radioactive granite.
By May 1952, the triumphalist rhetoric about Windscale was distinctly out of line with the reality. The first real technical problems emerged two months after the plant started producing plutonium. Pile number 2 overheated and had to be cooled using the huge fans at top speed. When closed for maintenance later that month, technicians found hundreds of extremely toxic uranium- filled cartridges had been blown out of the reactor, but the public was kept in ignorance.
Despite such incidents, Windscale scientists continued to proclaim the perfect safety of their plant from international platforms, stressing nothing had gone wrong outside the plant (saying nothing about the inside). At the “Atoms for Peace” conference at Geneva in November 1955 officials declared “operations at Sellafield had not given rise to any radioactive hazards in the surrounding countryside…the people near Sellafield (are) safe.” Thick concrete construction meant radioactivity given off by the plant was “so negligible that it cannot be measured,” they said.
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