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Why UK politicians covered up the causes of Windscale nuclear disaster

“………..Now tapes of the inquiry into the accident, heard for the first time in a BBC film, reveal the reasons why the politicians covered up the causes of the accident.

Scientists had been warning about the dangers of an accident for some time.

The safety margins of the radioactive materials inside the reactor were being further and further eroded.

“They were running much too close to the precipice,” says Dr Dunworth, a senior manager in the Nuclear Research Laboratory in Harwell, Oxfordshire, who was one of those highlighting the potential dangers.

But the politicians and the military ignored the warnings; instead they increased demands on Windscale to produce material for an H-bomb.

A succession of prime ministers since the war had been determined to persuade the Americans to share the secret of their nuclear weapons with Britain.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan believed that, if Britain could develop an H-bomb on the scale of the Americans’, they would treat it as a nuclear equal and form an alliance.

Even as Tuohy and the Windscale men faced their nuclear nightmare, Macmillan was arranging a summit in Washington where they would announce the Declaration of Common Purpose……..http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7030281.stm

November 6, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK