Author and journalist, Veronica McDermott, has more than thirty years experience of working in the media, public relations and public affairs and political consultancy.

Throughout her career, Veronica has taken a particular interest in industry and the environment and for ten years provided political and media relations consultancy services in Ireland to British Nuclear Fuels plc.

Born and raised in Co. Leitrim in Ireland’s North West, Veronica graduated with a BA in History and English from NUI Galway in 1976. She lives with her family in Castleknock, Dublin.

Going Nuclear was published on 10th October 2007 and can be purchased in most good bookshops or from Amazon.co.uk

 

Extract from Chapter 9; The Windscale Fire

The Windscale Fire, 1957

‘Most of the radioactivity was blown out to sea.’ UKAEA Press Release on Windscale Fire

.....Thirty years later, Arthur Wilson, the instrument technician who claimed to have first discovered the fire, told the Guardian his early warnings to management that the pile was on fire were ignored. His instrumentation – the uranium thermocouples that measured the  temperature in the pile – had melted, he said.
 
 ‘It just kept getting hotter. I telephoned someone who said not to worry, it will soon cool down,’ he was reported as saying. ‘I was not happy so I went up to an observation window that cut through the twelve foot of concrete [biological shielding] to have a look at the discharge face.’ ‘There were little jets of flame coming out of it. It was like the discharge out of the back of a jet engine.’
 
 Wilson claimed that when he reported what he had seen, he was told not to be ‘so bloody silly’ and the fire was allowed to burn for a further six hours with nothing much being done about it.

Read An Extended Extract from Chapter 13;
The Legacy of Three Mile Island