Already the nuclear industry, in its relatively brief history, has had serious accidents which have led to the release of large quantities of radioactive materials into the environment.

These are a British reactor fire at Windscale, where the graphite moderator overheated, and the disaster [previously explained] at Kyshtym in the Urals.

The British accident sent a plume of radioactive contaminants across Britian to Denmark and over the European continent. Part of it passed across the Irish Sea into Ireland... the greatest contamination occured close to the reactor itself.. thousands of gallons of milk had to be poured out because it contained high levels of iodine-131.

Every attempt was made to cover up the implications of the Windscale Fire... no advice was given to the public in the vicinity or indeed in the path of the plume to take simple precautions - such as staying indoors when the radiation in the air had reached its peak.

By the time of Chernobyl in 1986, all European countries had networks of radiation-monitoring stations, particularly in sensitive areas such as those close to nuclear power plants.

It was therefore no coincidence that the first indication in the West of a nuclear disaster somewhere in the Soviet Union, and very quickly pinned down to the Ukraine, was from abnormally high level readings of radioactivity in the air at Forsmark nuclear power station on the Eastern side of Sweden.

Indeed, when workers arrived at the Swedish station on the morning of the 28th April 1986, they were stopped from entering the plant because of contamination on their faces, hands and clothing. Activity was also found on cars in the car park, on the ground, and in puddles of water. Workers were therefore sent away and both local and central authorities were notified to put them in a state of readiness for carrying out routine emergency action and establishing countermeasures.

Within an hour of the notification, an emergency organization was already set up at the Swedish National Institute of Radiation Protction, growing in numbers to some 100 people and remaining active for 24 hours a day over the first months following the accident at Chernobyl.

Within the first day, the emergency task force had concluded that evacuation of any of the Swedish population, sheltering them or advising them to take iodine tablets to counter the fallout of radioactive iodine would not be justified. Similar conclusions were reached throughout Western Europe, although more careful analysis of the situation in hot-spot areas revealed later that a more judicious approach might well have been followed.