40 years after!

David Trimble visits the site of the Windscale fire to find its dangers greater than ever.

Recently, nearly 40 years after the Windscale fire, I was asked by the High Sheriff of Cumbria, the county in which it is located, to join a group of "nine well-informed Cumbrian individuals" to find out "what is going on at Sellafield and why". The purpose was "to enable some of the exaggerations and distortions to be refuted and provide a growing number of people who can pass on the real facts". We were to be guests of British Nuclear Fuels, shown around by senior staff who would answer all our questions fully.

As a child I used to spend summer holidays just down the coast. Inland is the lovely Lakeland valley of Wasdale, and in it Wastwater, the deepest lake in England. At the head of the valley is the Scafell range, with Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England. Some forty years ago came the first gas-cooled Magnox nuclear reactor to spoil this idyllic landscape. The site has expanded in sinister fashion, and now occupies an area the size of a city. Once called Windscale, before the 1957 fire, it is now known as Sellafield. It reprocesses fuel elements from reactors. Originally stored under water in purpose-built silos, now "intermediate-level" waste is encapsulated in a cement grout mix in stainless steel drums. There are already on site some 90,000 cubic metres.

"High-level waste" is converted into a glass-like substance, to remain in storage for 50 years. There is no policy for its disposal. This has, however, not stopped BNFL from bringing in waste from Europe, Japan, and America!"Low-level waste" is buried in clay-based trenches and concrete-lined vaults further down the coast. Discharges of radioactive liquid are made by pipeline into the Irish Sea, and aerial discharges of radioactive particles are also made. We were assured that all discharges were well within government and other guidelines, that safety standards are stringent, and that the leukaemia clusters in children living in or near Seascale have nothing whatsoever to do with Windscale.

During the 21 hours that I was there I was able to advise several visitors and four senior BNFL scientists about the dangers of atomic experimentation. I gave out copies of a memorandum which itemised the messages received by Dr. George King on the Windscale blunder in 1957, the major Russian nuclear accident in 1958, the warning before the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, and the specific warning given over the years in different Transmissions. Only one person asked for further information - but none of the scientists. Their conditioning is total. The radioactive legacy they are creating and leaving for future generations will surely return to haunt them for many lives to come.

David Trimble