My book covers in some depth the (military) reactor fire at Windscale in rural England in October 1957. I won’t go into details here (you can read about it in Wikipedia or, better still, buy my book next year) but the hero of the day was undoubtedly Tom Tuohy, second-in-charge at the sprawling military establishment. After the accident, a small team, led by physicist William Penney, carried out a frenetic inquiry at the plant. They interviewed Tuohy, among others.
Interestingly, the full transcripts were not released until 1989. I don’t make any use of these transcripts in the book, simply because I had enough other material for my purposes, but those transcripts do make for fascinating reading. For example, consider this exchange.
CHAIRMAN: Mr. Tuohy? Do you know what exposure you have had?
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. 1989. A Revised Transcript of the Proceedings of the Board of Enquiry into the Fire at Windscale Pile No. 1, October 1957. United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, p. 1.17.
TUOHY: I have got to make a confession here. I had several films during the night and several personal ionisation chambers but latterly we were changing the men around and there were queues of men waiting for films and personal ionisation chambers and I was going to the charge hoist and the roof etc. and for the latter part of the night I thought other people’s needs were much greater than my own. I had not had any radiation for a long time and from about 03.00 I did not have any film at all.
PEIRSON: What did you have before?
TUOHY: I have not checked back.
CHAIRMAN: That is one of the things we shall have to
enquire about later as to what exposure various people had.
Tuohy went on to promotions before leaving the industry. He died at age 90, so if he did suffer a high dose of radiation, it did not show up in his health/mortality.
