by Alan Rimmer
With the world now watching, the government was desperate to play-down the incident. Press releases spoke of only “minimal” releases of radiation and reassured the public that the release of iodine-13, which could cause thyroid cancer, would deteriorate in less than a week.
But prime minister Harold McMillan wanted to bury the issue, and summoned one of the few men he could trust to clear up the mess: William Penney.
Penney, already overloaded with work on the imminent Grapple X H-bomb trial at Christmas Island, rattled through the proceedings with almost indecent haste and “faults of judgement and inadequacies of instruments” were blamed for the accident.
A White Paper, published barely a month later, stated that the “Windscale mishap” caused injury to no-one and did not cause any local contamination.
An early press release suggested that most of the contamination was blown into the Irish Sea, although this was later amended when it was admitted there were two distinct plumes, one that carried fallout toward the north-east and the second south-east over densely-populated areas of England.
Contamination eventually reached western Europe. Penney insisted that much of the evidence presented to the inquiry be presented in secret because of national security considerations. The effect was to put a cloud of distrust over the site. And there was much to be suspicious about.
Joseph Corrie, a Sellafield worker who helped put out the fire later died from bone cancer. His widow Sheila told an inquest her husband had worked at Sellafield since 1947.
On the day of the 1957 fire she said: “He had been working right underneath the fallout. They were told the following Monday to wash all their clothes, but he had worked all day in those clothes. Someone told him he was contaminated.”
She said her husband’s illness started with pain in his back and ribs and was in “terrible pain.” Sellafield’s chief medical officer Dr Geoffrey Schofield said he carried out tests on Mr Corrie’s liver, lung and bones. These showed levels of plutonium in the organs between five and 10 times that in the general public. He added that the quantities of plutonium were “extremely small.”
The eight-man jury at Whitehaven returned an open verdict on Mr Corrie’s death.
Nuclear scientist Joseph McMaster was enjoying a day off at Seascale with his family when the fire broke out. He, his wife Stella and baby daughter Lynn were all exposed to radioactive fallout as they enjoyed a brisk walk along the coast.
Mr McMaster recalled: “On the day of the accident I remember seeing this plume of black smoke coming from one of the reactor stacks and thinking, God, I hope that’s not what I think it is. But no warning was given for days, so we thought things were all right and continued to walk; we enjoyed a picnic in the sand dunes while all the time fallout was raining down on us. No-one told us.”
Over the next 24 years the couple were to bury three of their four children. Daughter Lynn died of a rare form of leukaemia, linked to radiation exposure, when she was still a teenager. Second daughter Jill died of a similar sickness a few years later. Mrs McMaster later gave birth to twin girls one of whom, Judith, died after three days. Doctors said her lungs were not properly formed. The Ministry of Defence rejected out of hand any connection with the Windscale fire.
Twelve miles up the coast from the plant is the village of Maryport which experienced a sudden sharp spike in Downs syndrome births in the aftermath of the 1957 fire.
Very high levels of radiation were found on the beaches which many believed caused the problem. Researchers found that on average 164 babies a year were born in Maryport during the 1970s. Figures show you would expect one Down’s syndrome child for every 1,600 live births to women in their twenties.
On that basis one Down’s baby would be born in Maryport every 10 years. Yet in the same period eight Down’s babies were born to women with an average age of 25.
Another extraordinary cluster of Down’s babies was linked by two Irish doctors with women who were at school together in Dundalk, across the Irish Sea from Windscale. The authorities dismissed both claims as “fanciful”.
But the slow drip, drip of cases was starting to build and in 1983 the dam burst. A Yorkshire TV documentary revealed that childhood leukaemia in the Seascale area was 10 times the national average.
The programme struck a chord and dovetailed neatly with the claims being made by the nuclear veterans. It soon transpired that many men who worked at the plant, now renamed Sellafield because the Windscale name had become so toxic, had fathered children with a range of genetic disorders.
The controversy reached fever pitch when it was discovered doctors had been secretly “harvesting” the dead bodies of stillborn children and those killed in road accidents for tissue samples to test for radiation uptake.
This hugely controversial research, carried out by West Cumbria Health Authority, also studied samples of foetal tissue and placenta without the consent of parents. The discovery of a document signed by the local District Medical Officer stating it would be “inappropriate to disclose results to parents“, added fuel to the flames.
But these “baby experiments” were only the tip of the iceberg. It turned out that pathologists had been collecting bones and body parts from dead and stillborn children for decades and sending them to America for a so-called “sunshine experiment.”
Apparently thousands of body parts had been shipped from all over Britain, and other parts of the world, to a research centre in Chicago were tests were carried out on the uptake of Strontium 90, a key ingredient of nuclear bomb tests fallout.
The body parts had been gathered without the knowledge or consent of the parents. The existence of this experiment was at first flatly denied by the British Department of Health. But an American doctor made worldwide headlines by disclosing the existence of just such an experiment called “Project Sunshine”.
The United States Department of Energy later admitted more than 6,000 dead babies had been harvested for use in fallout experiments without parental consent.
The National Radiological Protection Board, which had resolutely insisted that no-one had been affected by the fallout from the Windscale incident, finally issued a report estimating that 32 deaths and at least 260 cases of cancer could be attributed to the fire.
But there were widespread concerns that this figure was much too low. In 1993, official figures confirmed that in nearby Seascale, the incidence of leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (both linked with people being exposed to radioactive material) was 14 times the national average.
Ken McGinley could see clear parallels with the Windscale experience and that of his own veterans. It didn’t surprise him that William Penney had been the man chosen by the government to keep a lid on the incident.
He had been writing to the scientist for several years asking him to comment on the plight of the nuclear veterans, but had never received a reply. In 1985, however, an unexpected opportunity arose to bring ex-soldier and scientist together.
THE URINAL DIALOGUES
Lord William Penney, OM, KBE, OBE, PhD, DSc, Father of the British atomic bomb, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of Imperial College and Supernumerary of St Catherine’s College Oxford, must have thought he was in purgatory: every time he went to the lavatory, he was joined at the urinals by Ken McGinley, former private in the Royal Engineers, who greeted him with a cheeky, “We’ll have to stop meeting like this…”
Trapped and helpless, Lord Penney could only smile weakly as he endured a stream of questions from the loquacious Scot who easily brushed aside Penney’s MoD minder, a huge flat-faced individual with beetling brows, whenever he moved to intervene.
The unscheduled ‘meetings’ were held in the improbable setting of the gentlemen’s toilets in a large building annexed to the St James’s hotel in central London. The building was the venue for the Australian Royal Commission which had clattered noisily into town for a spot of Pom-bashing, over the conduct of the British during atomic bomb testing carried out in Australia�
�s vast deserts in the 1950s.
Penney had been most reluctant to take part in these proceedings, but had been persuaded by his former masters in Whitehall. Ever the patriot he agreed to be questioned by the Commission, chaired by a colourful and abrasive Australian judge named James McClelland, dubbed ‘Diamond Jim’ for his sharp suits and sparkling tiepins that brought to mind a Mississippi riverboat gambler.
Penney was not enjoying the experience.
He had prepared a 12-page statement setting out how the bomb tests had been conducted, and how safety considerations had been the number one priority of the scientific team.
McClelland was having none of it and had already lambasted the British government for withholding relevant documentary evidence covering that period of British scientific history.
He suggested the government was dragging its feet and warned witnesses not to trifle with the truth. He had already caused a minor sensation by producing like a rabbit from a magician’s hat an official document showing that British scientists had seriously considered using Wick, an island off the northern coast of Scotland, as a possible test site for nuclear weapons.
Parliament was in uproar; Scottish politicians were raising hell.
Penney, according to those closest to him, was deeply affected by many of the allegations that were coming out of the enquiry, such as those about using men as human guinea pigs.
But the stories that upset him most were those claiming that many of their children had been born deformed. These had already prompted him to send at least one letter to a newspaper expressing his concern about the “dreadful problems.”
And it was well known he had been devastated over the birth of a malformed baby to the wife of his old Los Alamos colleague Sir Ernest Titterton.
It was March 1985 and McGinley had been in the news almost constantly for two years. His tub-thumping allegations had culminated in part to Penney’s presence before the commission.
Under normal circumstances, Lord Penney would have run a mile before agreeing to see McGinley who only that afternoon had been on TV accusing Penney and his political masters of “crimes against humanity”.
Unfortunately for Penney, the meetings were unavoidable. At aged 76, he had a condition not uncommon in gentlemen of advancing years: a weak bladder. This necessitated him visiting the toilet at frequent intervals and, to his obvious embarrassment, found his visits coincided with McGinley who, it seemed, had a bladder condition in synchronisation with his own.
Scientists like Penney had good reason to be careful about whom they met. Once feted and admired, they were now being treated like pariahs. The horrors of nuclear war had been brought into sharp focus by the veterans, and the public was baying for blood, especially in Britain which had a long tradition of nuclear antipathy.
Penney’s shoulders slumped whenever the slightly-built Scot appeared at his side; it was an ignominious position to be in for a man of his stature.
McGinley, who away from the microphones was a courteous man, was aware of his discomfiture. “I don’t mean to bother you Lord Penney,” he said during one visit. “I’m not doing this deliberately. It’s just that, well…if you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.”
Lord Penney, a burly square-set individual, big around the beam and a heavy jaw, had been given a rough ride by the commission who seemed to be holding him personally responsible for all the sins of the nuclear bomb tests.
He was forced to answer some uncomfortable questions and admitted that at least one of the bomb tests had been far bigger than expected. Penney obviously loathed the experience.
Throughout all the pre-publicity, he had maintained a lofty silence, not wanting to add fuel to the debate, hoping all the brouhaha would eventually go away. He had never been known to give an interview about the bomb tests, and he usually avoided questions.
But on his ‘comfort breaks’ he could hardly avoid McGinley, and McGinley took full advantage: “I bombarded him with questions at every opportunity,” recalls McGinley.
“I knew I would never get another chance. I told him about the effects on some of the soldiers and how it had affected their lives. I told him about the widows left behind and the children that had been born deformed. I said it could not possibly be all coincidence.
“He listened carefully and looked distinctly uncomfortable. I don’t think anyone had spoken to him like that before. I remember him saying he was “sorry” for what had happened to the men, and that everything had been done to protect them.
“He gave me a copy of the statement he had made to the commission. As far as I was concerned it was full of inaccuracies, but I didn’t want to upset him, and his minder was ready to step in at the first opportunity.
“I believe he was sincere in what he was saying, but I also thought he was hiding something and I told him so. Penney just looked sad. That’s my last memory of him.”
McGinley couldn’t know it, but Penney was battling liver cancer to which he finally succumbed in 1991.
Some experts said it was ‘highly likely’ it was linked to his role in the atomic bomb tests. Some believed it was an apposite end to a life steeped in secrecy and suspicion.
His scientific achievements were monumental, but people like Ken McGinley found it hard to have any sympathy. “The fact is that people like Penney and his ilk destroyed thousands of lives, and I can’t really forgive him for that,” was McGinley’s only comment.
Lord Penney’s funeral took place in the village of East Hendred, 20 miles from Oxford, where he and his wife retired to in 1976.
He lived in some splendour in a substantial 17th century cottage in Cat Street with white plaster walls, hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, manicured lawns and substantial of gardens.
As the “Father of Britain’s H-bomb” he had been showered with honours and took up several academic positions including Rector of Imperial College.
He remained shy and secretive to the end of his life and rarely talked about the atomic bomb tests that had brought him so much prestige and fame. But he was said to have retained a self-deprecating sense of humour, despite the horrors his work conjured up.
One example of this came at the height of his fame in 1958. Harold Macmillan invited him to a drinks party and asked him how many megaton bombs it would take to destroy Britain, to which Penney replied: “Five or six will knock us out, or to be on the safe side seven or eight,” adding with his characteristic grin: “I’ll ‘ave another gin and tonic, if you’d be so kind.”
His old Los Alamos colleague, Professor Michael Moore, believed that Penney never got over the death of his first wife. “I believe this is what drove him to achieve what he did,” he recalled.
“He had a naturally sunny disposition which changed after her death. Penney was always marked down for greatness and he never had any of the pangs of conscious about the use of the atomic bomb that most of the rest of us had.
“He was a British patriot through and through, even though I did hear talk that the Americans regarded him as ‘one of their own’ from the time he went to America to study in the early 1930s.
“Certainly he always went along with everything the Americans said. They trusted him because he was never tainted by any connection with the Communist cause prevalent in Cambridge and other universities at the time.
“They were particularly impressed that Penney had cut off all ties with Hyman Levy, his mathematics tutor at Imperial College, who was a well-known communist.
“Of all the British scientists, it was Penney that people like Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, wanted most to work in America. But Penney would never leave the country he loved.”
Penney liked gardening, and could often be seen digging for potatoes in a small vegetable patch to the left of the house. Locals called him “Bill”, his wife was known as “Lady P” and they, as you might expect, were pillars of the community.
Before he died, he burned all his private papers and tellingly left a substantial s
um in his will to build a play park for local children.
It was later officially opened by his wife Lady Eleanor Penney in memory of her husband. She walked down a footpath through a crowd of villagers and children to open the new Penney Play-park. She cut a ribbon across the gate and unveiled a plaque commemorating the opening. She told the local newspaper: “Bill loved children and always found them much easier company than their elders.”
THE ROAD TO CHERNOBYL
The Australian Royal Commission left Britain with its tail between its legs. The “killer punch” that McClelland had cherished never materialised.
After all the windy rhetoric his commission had discovered that 30 badly-leaking drums of radio-active waste were dumped off the West Australian coast; one hundred aborigines walked barefoot over nuclear-contaminated ground because boots they had been given didn't fit; and a 1953 British nuclear test that allegedly caused a 'black mist' should not have been fired.
These were slim pickings for McClelland who was denied a triumphal return to Australia, and even less for McGinley and his veterans to get their teeth into. The Ministry of Defence appeared bomb-proof; there was no exposed flank to attack. Once again the veteran’s campaign began to sink in a sea of indifference.
Fate took a hand on April 26, 1986 at 1.23am Moscow time, when an explosion occurred in the No 4 unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power station 18km from the town of Chernobyl and 2km from the “company town” of Pripyat.
It was the most serious accident in the history of nuclear power. A series of blunders by operators involved in safety checks led to the withdrawal of all 211 control rods from the reactor.
This in turn led to a sudden loss of water used to cool 1,661 uranium fuel assemblies that were set in pressure pipes surrounded by 1,700 tons of graphite blocks. This in turn caused a power surge creating a huge chemical explosion which blew the top off the reactor and spewed out vast quantities of radiation.