The way the wind is blowing at the time of a nuclear disaster is crucial to the action the authorities need to take to protect the civilian population. Among the first priorities is issuing iodine tablets to protect people’s thyroid from absorbing the radioactive particles from the fallout that may later cause cancer.
But in October 1957, when a plume of radioactivity spread out from the burning pile at Windscale in Cumbria, the reaction of the authorities was not to warn the public but to reassure them. Everything was under control. Children continued to pick potatoes in the fields surrounding the plant while the radioactivity showered down on them.
While this disaster was not quite on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima, there was a radioactive plume that spread for hundreds of miles on a westerly wind across the north of England and deep into Europe. However, on the first day of the disaster, the wind was said to be blowing from the east, across the Irish Sea and dusting Ireland in radioactive fallout.
It remains a sensitive issue and Ireland remains implacably opposed to Britain’s continuing nuclear programme. This is partly based on the belief of those along the Irish coast, closest to Sellafield, that a spate of birth defects in the area after the fire was a result of exposure to radioactivity.
The official inquiry into the accident was later acknowledged as a whitewash designed to protect the UK’s atomic weapon programme. The pages for the Met Office’s October record of wind direction at the Windscale plant were missing and replaced with a note “No records, mast dismantled”.
