Letter Carol McManus: GEORGE Kerevan’s excellent article clearly portrays the cost of nuclear weapons (Nuclear ambitions have always been achieved at the cost of prosperity, July 18, The National). There’s another cost – of immense consequence to Scotland. Suppression and/or distortion of facts have been linked to the nuclear industry since at least the 1950s, an example being the long suppression of Dr Alice Stewart’s research findings on the dangers of X-rays to the unborn child. There is considerable evidence that another may be contained in a UK Government version of events quoted by Kerevan – that of the wind direction and areas affected by fallout from the Windscale nuclear fire of 1957. This fire was the most serious nuclear accident to occur outwith the Soviet Union up until that time, and so of great embarrassment to the government. Radioactive fallout from Windscale was detected in days following the fire over northern Europe and as far north-east as Norway, which indicates a far different direction of travel. Paul Langley’s nuclear history blog records that the Scandinavians knew what had happened at Windscale before the British people were informed. At the time, wind direction was officially reported to have been blowing out to sea, but in 1974 this was corrected by the Director of the National Radiation Protection Board to state that the wind at the time of the fire was blowing the radiation inland (as Kerevan wrote).
National 22nd July 2016 read more »