Invited Editorial: The Windscale accident - some memories and reflections

On the 3rd October 1957, after a virtuoso speech by Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Party Conference voted against British renunciation of the H-bomb. On the 4th, the Soviet Sputnik I - the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth - astonished and alarmed the Western world. On the 9th, Britain's last atmospheric A-bomb test took place in Australia. From the 10th to the 12th, fire in Windscale's Pile Number 1 threatened catastrophe. An epidemic of Asian flu swept through England and Wales.

From those ten memorable days the event most often remembered must be the Windscale accident. It is for me. When I read David McGeoghegan's and Keith Binks' paper (page 261 of this issue) it was another interesting reminder of topics that have recurred in my life for the past 40 years - Windscale, radiological protection and epidemiology.

When I joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority in January 1959, the 1957 accident still loomed hugely, especially for the new Authority Health and Safety Branch (AHSB) to which I was recruited. My first job there was as joint secretary of a committee on training in radiological health and safety, which had been set up as a result of the accident. It was not easy for a newcomer with no scientific background, but it was an immense privilege to meet such remarkable men as Sir Ernest Rock Carling and Professor Val Mayneord each week. And I was most fortunate to work for the UKAEA's first Director of Health and Safety, the wise and witty Dr Andrew McLean, who as Chief Medical Officer at Risley, had been much involved in all the health aspects of the accident.

As Director of Health and Safety, one of his concerns was to provide the UKAEA with the best possible, unified, system of health records. Apart from its management value, and its importance for public accountability and public relations, he was well aware of how essential it would be in the long term for epidemiological studies. At Risley, he had been able to coordinate and rationalise health records in the northern establishments. But the UKAEA was a highly decentralised organisation; various establishments had their own idiosyncratic methods of record keeping, and resisted change. Objections were raised, too, to the alleged costs of a unified system. Patience and persuasion prevailed, and by the mid-1960s Andrew McLean and his colleague, Ken Duncan (the UKAEA Chief Medical Officer), developed and put in place a system which was up to the highest standards of major industrial organisations of the period.

I remember once asking him whether a special life-time study might not be undertaken of the 470 men who had been engaged in the fire and the clean-up operation because, though only a small group, they had the advantages of being easy to follow up and of having good radiation records. As I remember, this was regarded as inadvisable, or even impossible, as it might cause harmful and unnecessary anxiety to the people concerned; nor could they be followed up after they left UKAEA employment, without an invasion of privacy. Now it is all here in McGeoghegan's and Binks' fascinating retrospective study.

I was transferred from the AHSB to the UKAEA history office in 1967, but the Windscale accident was not left behind for long. A two-volume history of 'Britain and atomic energy 1945-1952' was published in 1974, and work then began on the sequel (1952-1958). A chapter on the Windscale accident was assigned to me to write. I did a good deal of work on it, and interviewed many of the people involved. However, as it turned out, the 1952-1958 book was never completed or published. But the work was not altogether wasted, for some of the interviews I did then, and saved, would have been impossible in the 1980s.

The Windscale accident again came to the fore when the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 renewed public interest in reactor accidents. Nearer to home, the date was approaching (January 1988) when UKAEA and other official files about Windscale 1957 would be opened in the Public Record Office, and much media interest and publicity were likely. After a thorough study of all the relevant papers I suggested a book might be useful. It was agreed and the result was my Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident, first published in 1992.

There is so much to remember and reflect on, but I will conclude with just two comments. First, there is still more to learn about the accident, and various studies are, I know, ongoing. One significant event can yield new information and insights for many years, especially as new and more powerful analytical tools become available. This is true, a weapons scientist told me, of nuclear weapon tests, provided there are good records. The same is perhaps even truer of an event like the Windscale accident, in which the passage of time (as well as improved analytical methods) is so important in epidemiology.

Second, I am very conscious, as I read this study of morbidity and mortality, that I am seeing the outcome not of present radiological standards and methods of protection but of those that obtained decades ago. These results are a testimony to the work of post-war health physicists, and to the vital influence of ICRP - refounded in 1950 largely on the initiative of Rock Carling and Mayneord. With daunting practical questions crying out for answers, and little research material to draw on, ICRP gave sound and far-sighted advice for the new atomic age. The world has moved on, but we have good reason to remember the wise men of the 1950s with admiration and gratitude.