The impacts of the Chernobyl disaster on the UK
In April 1986, a Soviet nuclear power station exploded, depositing radioactive material across Europe. Here’s how the Chernobyl disaster affected the UK.
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The Chernobyl disaster is famed as the biggest nuclear accident in history. Due to a routine safety check gone wrong at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine, the facility’s fourth reactor exploded in April 1986.
The reactor’s heavy steel and concrete lid was sent flying, allowing radioactive plumes to escape into the atmosphere. The total amount of radioactive material released is thought to have been 400 times more than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The radioactive cloud drifted over not only the Soviet Union (of which Ukraine was back then a part) but also other European countries. Due to powerful winds, even British soil thousands of miles away was left contaminated – but how much was the UK really affected by Chernobyl? We at Sky HISTORY just had to find out.
How the news of Chernobyl broke
The explosion itself occurred on 26th April 1986, but Soviet authorities were slow to report it publicly. Though residents of nearby areas were evacuated, this was not until 36 hours after the explosion. Even then, locals were kept in the dark about the true scale of the crisis that had unfolded on their doorstep.
Not that the notoriously secretive Soviet Union was going to be able to maintain this particular cover-up for too long. As early as 28th April, Swedish monitoring stations detected suspiciously high levels of airborne radiation. The Soviet government was cornered into admitting that, yes, a nuclear accident had occurred at Chernobyl – much to wider Europe’s consternation.
The UK’s initial response to Chernobyl
News of Chernobyl caught the British government at an especially inconvenient time. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and No 10 press secretary Bernard Ingham were all in Tokyo, leaving Whitehall somewhat rudderless.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries was bombarded by calls from anxious Brits. Environment Secretary Kenneth Baker insisted that Chernobyl’s risks to the British public were ‘insignificant’.
National Radiological Protection Board head John Dunster warned that Chernobyl would still kill ‘tens of people’ in the UK. He later clarified that these deaths would result from radiation-induced cancer cases over the next 30 to 40 years.
The UK imposes new controls on livestock
The radioactive particles that had reached the UK were far fewer than those deposited across Eastern Europe. However, there were still fears that they could have been absorbed by foliage grazed upon by livestock. This raised questions over whether British farmers’ meat was still safe to eat.
The only way to find out was to have the animals subjected to radiation readings. Using powers bestowed by the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985, the UK government imposed new restrictions on farmers’ movement of sheep.
These new rules were in force across upland areas where rain was thought to have brought especially high levels of radiocaesium. In parts of Cumbria, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, sheep contaminated with radiocaesium above a specific maximum limit were kept out of the food chain.
This limit was 1,000 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg). Any sheep a farmer wanted to move out of a restricted area first had to be checked for radiation. Should the level of contamination be classed as too dangerous, the sheep would be physically marked with a dye until deemed safe to release. Hence, this scheme came to be known as ‘Mark and Release’.
When were these restrictions on farmers lifted?
Thatcher was reportedly unimpressed by how her ministers handled Chernobyl in her absence. However, farming regulations implemented by her government to mitigate radiation risks originating from Chernobyl remained in place for more than two decades.
Northern Ireland axed its ‘Mark and Release’ controls in 2000, with Scotland following in 2010. However, they did not go in England and Wales until 2012, following Food Standards Agency surveys of radioactivity levels in 2010 and 2011. Radiocaesium readings had fallen to such an extent that these remaining controls were no longer thought necessary.
Nonetheless, long-lingering memories of the Chernobyl disaster have doubtless blighted the reputation of nuclear power in the eyes of the British public (and elsewhere).
There’s definitely something morbidly fascinating about the history of nuclear disasters. That’s why you can expect us to focus on them quite a bit more in future documentaries. For updates on when these shows are set to air, subscribe to the Sky HISTORY newsletter.
