nuclear-news

While this disaster was not quite on the scale of Chernobyl orFukushima, 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 whitewashdesigned 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”.