District surveys following the Windscale incident, October 1957. 1958.

During 10-11 October 1957 a fire in the core of a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works, Sellafield (in the current county of Cumbria, England) led to a significant release of radioactive material to atmosphere. The accident at Windscale No. 1 Pile required a large-scale environmental monitoring programme to be conducted and the results of this survey led to a restriction on the distribution of milk from an area adjacent to Windscale Works for a period of several weeks. This monitoring programme was described in detail by H J Dunster and his colleagues from the Industrial Group of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (which operated Windscale Works in 1957) in a paper presented to the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva during 1-13 September 1958. The paper, from the proceedings of this conference, is reproduced here.

A view from Europe: stability, consistency or pragmatism.

The last few years of this decade look like a period of reappraisal of radiation protection standards. The revised risk estimates from Japan will be available, and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation will be publishing new reports on biological topics. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has started a review of its basic recommendations, and the new specification for dose equivalent in radiation fields of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) will be coming into use. All this is occurring at a time when some countries are still trying to catch up with committed dose equivalent and the recently recommended change in the value of the quality factor for neutrons. In Europe, the problems of adapting to new ICRP recommendations are considerable. The European Community, including 12 states and nine languages, takes ICRP recommendations as a basis and develops council directives that are binding on member states, which have then to arrange for their own regulatory changes. Any substantial adjustments could take 5 y or more to work through the system. Clearly, the regulatory preference is for stability. Equally clearly, trade unions and public interest groups favor a rapid response to scientific developments (provided that the change is downward). Organizations such as the ICRP have to balance their desire for internal consistency and intellectual purity against the practical problems of their clients in adjusting to change. This paper indicates some of the changes that might be necessary over the next few years and how, given a pragmatic approach, they might be accommodated in Europe without too much regulatory confusion.