The Danger of Safety

By Jules Coventry

Britain fought bravely throughout the second world war but its people are tired and the cold war with the Soviet Union brings renewed fear.  The government is pursuing a nuclear deterrent at breakneck speed but when it pushes too hard there is a serious reactor failure that they must cover up to save their careers.

Too many people know the secrets of the disaster and they must be kept quiet at all costs.  When those charged with keeping a lid on the affair go to far they themselves have to keep the cover up going.

This is a story about technology being mis-used by leaders who barely understand it and about powerful people serving themselves ahead of society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jules Coventry
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201140939

Book preview

The Folly

Nick Wallbank was excited about his new job.  The growing nuclear facility at Greyshaw seemed to be taking on every talented young physicist in the UK.  Now he was joining them. 

He was convinced that nuclear power held the key to his country’s safety and prosperity.  Everyone knew that Russia had the A bomb and the UK needed one of its own as a deterrent.  Added to that, cheap atomic energy was going to power the country’s economic resurgence as it left post war poverty behind and joined the new age where everything was electric.  There was no doubt in his mind that where he was headed was where it was at.

During his interview, at a Ministry office in London, the panel had been very interested in his PhD on the use of computers to control machinery:  Now he was joining a team working on the processing of nuclear waste at the West Cumberland site.

His friends had taken city jobs with hospitals, accountants or law firms and they had ribbed him mercilessly about his future relationships with sheep.  As he took the long train journey from London to an overnight stop at Lancaster and, the next day, on the sleepy branch line that hugged the west coast of Cumberland he began to realise just how isolated Greyshaw was going to be.

By the time the little train reached Grange-over-Sands it had started to rain.  What little he could see of the landscape through the fogged up windows looked misty and cold.  His carriage rattled on through the town of Barrow where the Navy’s submarines were built; rumour had it that they would be building a nuclear powered sub soon.  Then the stops became less frequent.  On the left of the train he knew the sea must be close by but he couldn’t even glimpse it through the grey mist.  On the right he could make out steep hills rising abruptly from the coastal plain and quickly disappearing into cloud.  After several halts at desolate mining villages the train arrived at Greyshaw station.

He was met at the station by a chubby young man with a hearty voice and a firm handshake. ‘Welcome to the brains trust old boy, I’m Roland Lewis-Jones and we’ll be working together.  The boss asked me to come and pick you up.’ 

Nick carried the battered suitcase that had accompanied him for the last six years, throughout his university career, over to Roland’s car.  There was no doubt which car was his; it was the only car in the station’s small gravel car park; a grey Triumph Vanguard.  Roland grabbed the chrome handle of the boot and lifted it open.  ‘No need to lock anything up here!’

Nick heaved his case inside.  He was glad Roland had been sent to pick him up.  The plant’s odd shaped buildings were just about visible through the rain:  They must be at least a mile away and his arms would have been dropping off after such a long trudge with his case.

Particularly odd were the two huge chimneys that loomed out of the mist.  They were four hundred feet tall and towered over the massive concrete block houses that he knew must contain the nuclear reactors.  Each chimney had a concrete structure at its top that made it look top heavy; fatter high up than at ground level.  They looked like weird plants and added to the mysterious look of the Greyshaw site.

‘Cockcroft’s follies we call them’ explained Roland seeing the direction of Nick’s gaze.  ‘They started as slim chimney stacks but he insisted on filters being added even though they were nearly finished; that’s why the filters are on top of the chimney stacks rather than at the bottom.  Heaven knows why he thought they were needed.  The piles don’t give off any particles; only heat.  You can’t argue with a Nobel Prize winner, I suppose, so he got his way in the end.’

Nick knew that Professor Cockcroft had done ground-breaking research on splitting the atom and was revered by everyone in the scientific community.  What neither he, nor Roland, realised right then was that the filters would save them from total disaster.

The drive to the site was halted at a security gate.  A single barrier manned by two armed servicemen and a huge Alsatian dog.  Either side of the barrier a wire mesh fence topped with rolls of barbed wire disappeared into the fog in both directions.  Roland passed across his security badge and explained Nick’s status as a new employee.  The guard disappeared into his cabin to check and came back with a visitor badge for Nick.  Roland drove on for what seemed like a mile before he reached a small car park and then led Nick into a grey building and the small, open plan office that housed the waste management team.  At one corner their manager had his office, a small room with a glass pane in its door so anyone wanting an audience could see if their boss was busy and be signalled to come in or to wait.  Just below the window a Brass plaque bore the name Frank Benley, Head of Waste Management.  Nick could see a thick set man with curly grey hair and a beard looking up from his desk.  Roland knocked and the man beckoned them in with a deep voiced Come and a sweeping gesture of his huge paw.  Roland made the introductions:  Frank had a certain gravitas but seemed affable and confident and Nick liked him from the start, thinking he would be a good to work for.

‘As part of the Major Incident Plan one of us from waste management has to be on duty at all times’ said Frank.  ‘Once you’ve had a couple of weeks to settle in I’ll put you into the rota.  Four of you do twelve hour shifts; four in the week and three over the weekend.  Every month I change it round so if you were doing four dayshifts you go onto three nights next.’

‘They told me I’d have to work shifts at the interview and I’m quite happy with that, I was a bit worried that I’d be on permanent nights being the new boy!’

‘I used to have to work shifts and I know how hard it is doing weekends or nights so I share it out.  It also means there is a month at a time when I am with each one of you for four day shifts so I can keep in touch with the projects you’re working on.’

‘Sounds good’ said Nick.

‘Have you signed the Official Secrets Act already?’ Frank asked.

‘No, not yet.’

Frank called his secretary and arranged to get Nick a copy of the blurb that he would have read about secrecy while Roland showed him to the desk Frank had allocated to him.  ‘As soon as you’ve got this chore out of the way I’ll take you on the tour.’

‘Great, I’m looking forward to seeing a real reactor.’

Nick sat down to slog his way through the Act.  It told him, again and again, that he mustn’t speak to anyone else about his work and anything he learned was the property of the nation, must recorded carefully and disclosed to his manager.  Disclosure to anyone else must be kept on a need to know basis. 

It described how documents were to be controlled so none would ever be seen by outsiders.  Any document marked RESTRICTED must never leave the site.  Nick would soon find out that even notepads were printed with the word RESTRICTED on every sheet.  Higher levels of security were applied to documents marked SECRET or TOP SECRET.  The location of these was tracked at all times and everyone who saw them was recorded.  Very few people were allowed access to documents given the TOP SECRET rating; only those at the very centre of the web.

Finally Nick came to a declaration form that he had to sign and get his boss to witness.  It reminded him of his responsibilities.  When he signed his name it felt like he had just given over ownership of his mind; that belonged to the Defence Department now.

Roland’s tour started with the new Magnox Reactor.  It was the latest design and had only been opened by the Queen just a few months before.  A gas cooled reactor that would be much more efficient and safe than its air cooled predecessors.  The politicians were telling the country it would produce electricity so cheap that there will be no point in electricity meters. 

‘Of course the electricity is a useful bi-product but the real aim of the reactor is to produce Plutonium 239 for the bomb program’ Roland explained.  ‘It isn’t so good for making the Tritium we need so we do that in the original reactors, Piles One and Two.’

‘Why’s it necessary to make Tritium, I don’t get what an unstable isotope of Hydrogen can be used for in a fission bomb?’

‘The latest hydrogen bombs are designed to explode in three stages and all three depend on materials produced here’ explained Roland patiently.  ‘You’ve signed the Secrets Act now so I can tell you how it works.  In the first stage of the bomb a plutonium charge is detonated starting a fission reaction.  During fission the Plutonium breaks down into lighter materials and releases a huge rush of energy as heat and gamma rays.’

‘That’s just like the atom bombs dropped on Japan to end the Second World War.’ 

‘Right but in a hydrogen bomb this initial blast is just to get things going.  It sets off a fusion reaction between Deuterium and Tritium in the second stage and that releases an even bigger wave of energy which compresses the third stage and intensifies its explosion’ continued Roland.  ‘The third stage is really just a larger version of the first but its destructive power is hundreds of times greater due to the compression from stage two.’ 

Nick knew from what he read in the papers that the latest bombs were even more frighteningly powerful than the original ones.  In a moment of rage their explosion would wipe a big city off the map and blind anyone that witnessed it.  Like all of Manchester or Leeds gone in a flash.  The thought made him shiver.

Roland cheerfully led him on round the site introducing him to his new colleagues along the way.  All of the scientists and supervisors wore white lab coats so they were easily distinguishable from the hundreds of other workers who were dressed in blue overalls.  Most of the scientists were concentrating hard on their work and didn’t say too much.  They all looked serious, some even a bit strained, and this just reinforced Nick’s belief that this ground breaking project was the centre of the scientific world.

As they walked towards the eighty foot high concrete block that housed Pile Two Nick was excited, but a little scared, at the prospect of his first visit to the inside of a full scale reactor.  The massive concrete building with its odd shaped chimney looked more menacing now. 

‘Both piles are exactly the same but Pile Two is on reduced power today so it’s the better one to go inside’ explained Roland.  ‘Let’s get suited up and go in.’

Roland showed Nick how they dressed to go inside the reactor.  They put on heavy radiation suits that had thin plates of lead sewn into the lining to absorb radiation.  Then they added thick gloves and a balaclava of similar material to the suit.  Nick felt like a medieval knight must have felt; the suit weighed a tonne.

They entered the reactor’s concrete containment building through a pair of heavy metal hatches that acted like an air lock.  The lighting inside gave everything a weird yellow glow.  An alarm light flashed every few seconds and threw waves of orange light around the inside of the concrete chamber.  Roland explained that the flashing indicated the alarm system was switched on.  If there was an emergency a loud horn would be sounded and the orange light would be permanently on telling anyone inside to get out quickly.

‘Never stay inside if the warning light isn’t flashing; if it’s off then the man at the entrance doesn’t know that anyone is inside and you don’t want to get locked in here accidentally!’

‘You can be sure I’ll remember that!’ Nick said thinking there was no danger he would forget this in a hurry.

‘The reactor core is a just a big block of graphite with lots of holes drilled through it’ continued Roland.  ‘Here at the charge face we insert the fuel rods.  They’re only twelve inches long so they’re not rods like the ones that go all the way through the Calder Hall reactor; more a collection of aluminium cans.  Each can has nuclear fuel encased inside it.’

Nick looked at the awesome wall in front of him.  It was seven metres high and fifteen metres across and was dotted with circular inspection covers. 

‘That’s the biological shield in front of the core’ said Roland.  ‘It makes it safe to work on this side for longer.  The cooling fans blow air in behind the shield to cool the reactor.’

Two men were on a platform suspended from a crane that could traverse across the width of the charge face and lift them to any point on it.

Roland saw that Nick was watching them.  ‘The men on the charge hoist are going to load some new fuel cans now.  You can see where they have removed one of the covers; behind each cover you can see the circular holes in the pile that they push the fuel cans into.’ 

Nick could see the men loading a can into one of the holes in the core.  ‘Do you fill the cans with fuel here at Greyshaw?’

‘No, they’re filled at Rishwell and get sent up here on a train.  If you look carefully you can see the fins that hold them central in the hole in the core.  That creates a gap all-round the can for the air coolant and the fins help to transfer their excess heat into the air.’ 

‘How did they know how many fins were needed to keep the reactor at the right temperature?’

‘When we started there were too many and we couldn’t speed the reaction up enough.  To make the reactor core hotter and speed the process up we clipped half the fins to make them smaller.  It took ages; there were half a million fins to cut down but we all mucked in and got the job done.’

‘Did that increase the risk of a can melting?’

‘We weren’t sure they would work at first but we were told we needed to make more Tritium so we had to try it; we just weren’t going fast enough to keep up with the Ruskies.  Anyway, where was I?  The air blown through the reactor to keep it cool goes straight up the chimney and into the fibre glass filters.  The filters are washed on an eleven day cycle to flush away any radioactive particles that do get up the chimney.’

‘What do you do with the water?  There must be thousands of gallons a day!’

‘We have a pipe going two miles out to sea and we pump it out through that.  It just warms the sea up a tiny bit.’

‘I guess the cans get slowly pushed through the core until they’ve had the right amount of neutron bombardment to make Plutonium and Tritium.’

‘That’s right.  We have to record the amount of time they are in there and the power that the reactor is running at to work out how fast to move them through.  When we need to move them on we put new cans in at the charge face and the finished ones get pushed out on the other side and fall into a cooling channel.

Above the graphite core were the silver coloured control rods which could be raised and lowered by electric motors.  These rods were made of Boron and, when lowered, would absorb neutrons emitted by the Uranium fuel:  With fewer neutrons bouncing around inside the core the chain reaction would die down quickly.

After the charge face Roland took Nick round to the other side of the core; the discharge face.  ‘Before we enter this area we need to put on oxygen masks’ said Roland.

‘Wow, what makes it so dangerous?’

‘We’ve had a few problems with fuel cans not dropping into the channel so it’s just a precaution in case there is a damaged can that’s stuck in the air outlet’ said Roland.  ‘Hardly ever happens but it’s better to be safe than sorry old chap.’

‘With the masks on they couldn’t talk at the discharge face but Roland pointed to where finished fuel rods had been pushed out of the core and dropped into boats in a water channel.  The boats were like sieves in which the cans could cool until they were collected:  They didn’t actually float and bars welded to the top of them spanned the channel to keep them from sinking.  A heavy metal sluice gate blocked the channel’s exit from the building.  When cans were ready to be collected the sluice gate would be raised and metal tools, looking like long shepherds crooks, were used to pull the boats  along the channel and out of the building.  Nick thought the whole thing was primitive; it must be easy for a can to get damaged falling from twenty feet if it didn’t drop into the channel and he was glad he was breathing air from a cylinder.

‘The channel keeps the cans cool until we transfer them into skips and move them to the big pond outside the de-canning shed for further cooling.’

‘And the water from the cooling channel gets pumped out to sea’ said Nick.

‘Right’ said Roland.  ‘Let’s go and get showered; everyone has to go through decontamination before being allowed to leave this area.’   Roland took him through the showering procedure.  ‘Always be careful with getting suited up; if you upset the Geiger counter on the way out you’ll have to go back through the shower with carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush until you’re clean.  That’s well worth avoiding, old chap’. 

Fortunately the Geiger counter just clicked at its normal slow pace when they were checked so they didn’t need to shower again.  If it sensed radioactivity it would have clicked faster to indicate the higher count of rays bombarding it.

‘Why on earth did they build the reactor with horizontal tubes for the fuel rods?’ Nick asked.  ‘Isn’t there a big risk that they will get stuck?  They must bend a bit when they get really hot?’

‘We call the core The Wall – kind of suitable since this project is intended to keep the Ruskies out.  We can’t use a floor to keep them out can we?’

Nick thought the reactor was quite primitive and Roland’s explanation was unbelievable but he didn’t want to offend his affable guide.  Surely a more sensible design would have had the fuel cans lowered through the core in vertical tubes so they could be dropped out in an emergency.  Men would have to enter these reactors if they ever needed to eject the fuel and it seemed to him that the risk of a can getting stuck if it over-heated was unacceptably high.

Nick had another surprise when Roland showed him round the control room.  He had expected the instrumentation to be far more sophisticated but there wasn’t a computer in sight.  The temperature of the reactor’s core was measured by thermocouple sensors with each one linked to a plotter in the control room but there didn’t seem to be many plotters.  ‘Are there enough temperature sensors for such a big pile?’

‘They’re in the same places as they were in the prototype reactor.  Cockcroft’s team worked out where the prototype would be hottest.  We copied that to the full scale reactor because it worked so well on the prototype.  Frankly it would help if we had more sensors but we have managed for four years without wiping Cumberland off the map.’

‘I was expecting there to be a computer recording hundreds of temperature signals and an alarm to tell if any need attention.’

‘No way, computers aren’t reliable enough for what we do.  Come on, I’ll show you the cooling pond and the de-canning plant next.’

The pond was a big concrete pool of water that ran alongside the long thin shed that housed the de-canning plant.  It was full of skips containing the fuel cans waiting to be processed.  In the pond the cans could be kept cool before each skip in turn would be moved into the de-canning plant using a big crane that spanned the pond.   The crane would place the skips on a roller conveyor that led through a gap in the corrugated iron wall of the de-canning plant.  As the crane released the skips gravity would make them roll along the conveyor and inside the metal shed. 

Roland led Nick inside the de-canning plant.  It was a long thin building with a row of metal chambers; one for each gap in the wall.  Each chamber had a line of workmen next to it; their arms disappearing into thick gauntlets built into the walls of the chamber and their faces peering through thick glass inspection windows.  The first man in the line picked cans from the skip and put them in a machine which, when he pulled a lever, removed the sealed end.  Once the machine had done its task he moved the can within reach of the next man in the line. 

The man looked grim but nodded a greeting to Roland who asked him How’s Dennis doing? 

Not good but his missus reckons it’ll only be a few more days now, poor bugger.  The lass can’t stand to hear him screaming anymore. Roland nodded and left the men to their rhythmic work.  Each man in the line transferred the cans between a succession of machines that opened them and pressed out the precious Tritium and Plutonium into a large metal flask.  The flask had a square lid of thick metal that could be folded down to seal the flask using a hand-wheel.  The workers hated this task as it took an arm-aching, age of turning the hand-wheel to slowly lower the folding lid into place.  When it was, at last, closed the workman pulled another lever to start a transfer machine which swapped the flask for an empty one.  The full, sealed flask was placed in an airlock where it could be moved out of the chamber and replaced with a fresh flask.  Once the flask was out of the chamber a second, even more secure lid was bolted on sealing the radioactive material inside.

The last workman in the line sorted the aluminium tubes putting those that could be re-used into a machine that washed them with high pressure water.  After cleaning he moved them into a skip which would be sent back to the filling plant.  Aging or damaged cans were put into another of the storage flasks, collecting highly radioactive waste that would be incredibly dangerous to be close to. 

‘Surely the water from the pressure washing doesn’t get pumped out to sea’ said Nick.

‘No, that’s medium level waste so we put that in the flocculation tanks over there’ said Roland pointing at a row of circular, concrete tanks each about ten metres high.  ‘Inside the tanks ninety five percent of the radioactive waste settles out as a sludge that we call Floc.’

‘The tanks must get filled up pretty quickly; where does the waste get put then?’

‘After a tank has had some time to settle we can draw off the harmless water from the top and we can pump that into the sea so they don’t fill up so quickly.  When one of them is full we just have to build another tank’ said Roland.

As they left the de-canning shed Roland explained that one of the workmen, a maintenance fitter, was dying of cancer: "Horrible way to go.  Pity too; he was popular bloke who always had a joke to share.  Some of the men reckon he got ill after he had been tightening a joint on a leaky pipe and the gasket burst spraying him with water but it’s a lot of tosh.  He smoked like a chimney so it’s much more likely that’s what’s done him in.

Finally Roland showed Nick the silos for the high level metal waste.  These were tall, rectangular structures made from steel and huddled together under a long platform with a metal roof.  The flasks of high level waste were hoisted up to the platform and Roland took Nick up to the dizzying height to show him how the flasks were emptied.  The wind howled around the roof which funnelled it into gusts that tried to tug them off the platform.

‘These silos are collecting material that will remain highly radioactive for a thousand years’ said Roland.

Each silo was sealed in the same way as the flasks and its outer lid was removed to allow more material to be dumped inside.  The flask to be emptied had its outer lid removed and was picked up by a crane with a large grabbing mechanism.  The mechanism had a huge wheel on one side that the workers could use to rotate the flask so the lid was downwards.  Once it was positioned over the silo they bolted the flask onto the silo.  Then they painstaking wound the hand-wheels; first to open the silo and then to open the flask allowing its contents to noisily spill downwards into the silo making it reverberate like there had been an explosion inside.

‘That looks like hard work’ Nick said to the sweating workman as he wound the hand-wheel to re-seal the flask.

‘Aye, it is that lad, unless you’re Mad Jack!’

‘Why? Is he really strong?’

‘Ney lad, he doesn’t bother to close the flap on the silo between emptying flasks.’

‘Have they never thought about providing a motor to operate the flaps?’ Nick asked Roland.

‘It wouldn’t be necessary if the workmen would just follow procedure.  I wouldn’t bother about Jack Dyball; he’ll find a way to get himself killed soon enough.  He got his nickname because he’s so careless that he set his overalls on fire while putting petrol in the strimmer.  He was lucky not to get hurt; two men nearby were quick witted enough to put him out.  He was dancing around like a crazy man and one of them had to tackle him so the other could tip the sand bucket onto the flames.  They can’t even send him to cut the grass round the perimeter fence without him endangering himself.’ 

‘Never mind him’ said Nick.  ‘Tipping the waste into these silos must stir up a cloud of dust inside them.  You can feel the wind swirling round up here:  I bet it sucks some particles out of the silo.  He could be hurting any one of us by being so stupid!’

In his mind Nick had already half designed a motorised unit that could open the flaps and prevent the silo’s flap ever being left open.  That would be easy but he had realised there was a bigger issue to solve.  No one had addressed the problem of what to do with the mounting heaps of waste.  If it wasn’t deemed too dangerous they pumped it into the sea and, if that was unacceptable, they simply stockpiled it in the Floc tanks or in the silos.  Neither of these structures was going to remain safe for anything like long enough to allow the radioactivity within them to die down.  I wonder what they are planning to do when the steel rusts away and the concrete crumbles? he thought as they walked back to the office in the drizzly gloom.

‘While we are out here there’s something Frank asked me to tell you’ said Roland.  ‘You’ll notice soon enough that one of the chaps in our section, Lawrence, is not quite up to speed.  You met him in the control room’

‘I remember’ said Nick, ‘he was the fair haired man with the waistcoat and the bushy eyebrows.’

‘That’s him.  You’ll soon find that any work he does will get given to you or I to do again.  He’s not really an engineer at all; the Ministry foisted him on us.  We think he’s a spy that’s been sent to keep an eye on us all.  You know, trying to make sure there are no bad apples here.  Apart from correcting all his work it’s best to be careful what we say to him.  Everything is always tickityboo when he is in earshot!’

‘Thanks for the warning; I’ll remember that!’

‘At least the shifts usually keep us apart so we only see him at change overs.  When he is on shift he seems to spend his entire day working in the control room; no doubt keeping his big ears open!’

‘I guess he doesn’t do too much work for us to correct then!’ said Nick.

‘Too right!’ said Roland.  ‘When you put it like that it’s probably a good thing he does bugger all.  Nearly time to go home old boy; where are you staying?’

‘An inn at Gosforth.  Personnel booked me a room there for a few weeks while I find somewhere permanent.  They said everything in Greyshaw is full’.

‘It’s always busy up here nowadays.  I’ll give you a lift back to Gosforth; it’s on my way.’

Roland had been a good guide and Nick had realised one thing from his first day; he wasn’t going to be bored as wherever he looked he could see problems waiting to be solved.

***

Back in London Charles Hawley, a Senior Manager in the Secret Service, was at Whitehall waiting for a meeting.  He sat, damp overcoat spread across his thighs, on an old uncomfortable chair wondering how many hours were wasted waiting for meetings with government mandarins.  The whole act of waiting seemed designed to convey how unimportant your time was to these people.  The corridor was immaculately panelled with dark oak and a plush carpet ran along its’ centre; nothing like the threadbare rags on the floor at his own office.  His chair by contrast was uncomfortable; frayed leather upholstery supported by worn out springs.  The whole effect was to say we are important and you’re not.

Long after he was bored of waiting the door opened abruptly and a mixture of light and tobacco smoke spilled out; the light framing the rotund figure of Harvey Sawyer, Permanent Secretary, who had commanded Charles presence.  Once inside Charles found Patrick Bowler, a Junior Minister in the Government, already lounging in a comfortable leather armchair next to Harvey’s desk, enjoying a long drag on a fat cigar.  He tried not to cough, not wanting to show his disgust at the fug in which these fat cats liked to work.  Worse he tried not to let it affect him that they had obviously been deciding what to tell him before he was admitted to their presence.  Sawyer returned to his own chair, a new looking leather backed swivel chair, without any concern to where Charles should sit.  No coffee or cigars were on offer to him, not that he wanted them.  At the other end of Harvey’s desk was a replica of the chair from outside obviously intended for Charles; he was being told his place.

As Permanent Secretary Harvey would run his Department of the Civil Service for whichever party was in power and right now Patrick was his master.  He picked up a pipe and took a long draw on it before opening the discussion in a deep growling drawl. ‘The Cabinet have decided to speed up the H bomb program again.  Harrison, the director of the Greyshaw facility, has just been ordered to increase production by another fifty percent.’

Charles knew the background.  Four years earlier the Americans had successfully tested the first Hydrogen bomb and shown the world that a bomb could be made a hundred times more powerful than a simple atom bomb.  The PM at the time had demanded to know what was needed for Britain to make such a device and ordered the output of the Greyshaw piles to be increased by a factor of four to achieve this.  Now the plant would have to respond to an even bigger challenge.  ‘How did Harrison react to this latest order?’

‘He argued against it; he believes it is risky but he is a realist and knows why it’s important right now.  Petersson, the head of the bomb making program, has told them how much Tritium and Plutonium he needs and Harrison knows he simply has to produce it’ said Patrick.

‘There’s no sign of help from the USA’ said Harvey.  ‘They believe we have too many Russian spies over here to be trusted with any of their precious secrets.’

Charles knew this might be true but also knew that this barbed comment was aimed at him; it emphasised that his organisation had failed and should make up for that failure by doing something extra; after all it was his team that should be rooting out the spies.  If only they had had more success in plugging leaks it might have made collaboration with the USA a possibility.  Despite the work of UK scientists being crucial to the Manhattan project (the design and test of the original atom bomb during the war) the United States Senate had passed the McMahon Act at the end of World War II making it a capital offence to disclose nuclear secrets to a foreign country, even if that country was an ally like Britain.  It didn’t look like the McMahon Act was going to be relaxed any time soon.

‘The Americans have forced us to go it alone and develop our own deterrent and we simply have to keep pace with the Russians’ said Harvey.  ‘At the outset our scientists were rather enjoying the limelight; now they have to deliver.’

‘Both main political parties have come to the same conclusion on this’ said Patrick.  We have to have our own deterrent for the day when Russian missiles can reach the USA.  As soon as the Russians can do that they will be able to walk into any country in Europe because Uncle Sam will have to protect its own people by staying out of a nuclear war so we won’t get any help from them.’

‘And we expect there will be an international test ban soon so we need to have our bomb developed before that to make sure we have a place at the bargaining table’ said Harvey.

‘OK’ said Charles ‘You know how fast Greyshaw must produce to get your bomb ready in time but have you quantified the risk of a disastrous accident as a result?’

‘If that happens it will bring down whichever party is in power at the time’ said Patrick.

‘With respect that’s not what I was asking’ said Charles.  ‘We all know the public will blame the party in power when something goes wrong. You lot are always playing musical chairs; when the music stops someone is left standing up and they’re out of the game.  The scientists won’t care about which Government is in power; only whether Greyshaw will cause an enormous accident.  How high is the risk of that?’

‘Honest answer:  We don’t know’ said Patrick.  ‘Given that Harrison urged us to be more cautious we know the risks are significant even though no-one can say how high they are for definite. However it is a certainty that we will end up under Russian control if we don’t have a deterrent so we have to speed up development.  When you look at the risks that way we simply have to go ahead.  We know we will put the scientists at Greyshaw under more pressure than they have known before and that is where we need you and your man on the inside’.

Harvey continued ‘If there are just a few scientists who get their knickers in a twist over this then you will need to ensure their silence.  Same as before; we would prefer you solve such problems by leaning on them gently but you can take any action necessary to keep this decision secret.  If there is a wider rebellion among them then we need to know immediately and we may need to take the pressure off a little to appease them.  So this time, Charles, you have a more important role than ever.’

‘And’, continued Patrick ‘you can expect us to be very grateful if we can get through this.  If we can successfully test a hydrogen bomb before the test ban then we’ll be able to negotiate a supply of bombs from the USA.  They will be desperate to stop our bomb program in case details get leaked to Russia.  If we can get bombs from them we won’t need Greyshaw and we can shut the damn place down; heaven knows that will save us a fortune.  Taking you’re rather good analogy a bit further, Charles, we need you to make sure the music doesn’t stop until we’ve done that.’

‘So’, said Harvey, ‘when it comes to the risk we are depending on you to tell us.  All our careers will finish in disgrace if there’s an accident and the British Public sees what we did as the most dangerous act of folly ever.’

Charles left the meeting knowing he was up to his neck in this now and hoping that there would still be a British Public at the end of it.

The Nurse

Nick settled in quickly.  At last he was earning good salary after all the years of studying and living on a shoestring.  His first move was to buy a second hand car, a red Austin Healey 100 convertible, so for the first time in his life, he didn’t need to depend on public transport.  The little sports car would be great in the summer but he hadn’t yet had a chance to drive it without having its soft-top fully closed to keep out the rain.  This was Cumberland and, as Nick was learning, it was prone to rain.  A lot.

He had also found a flat at Ravenglass ten miles down the coast.  It meant he had a half hour drive before and after work but he preferred to get well away from Greyshaw in the evenings.  Ravenglass was quiet and he could go out at night without tripping over colleagues from work; that was impossible in the villages close to Greyshaw.  Fifty yards from his flat there was a good pub where the locals were friendly and he was beginning to get to know some of them well enough to enjoy their conversation over a couple of beers.  Then came the week when he started twelve hour shifts and, seemingly trivial tasks like food shopping suddenly needed more planning; he had run out of groceries by the Wednesday and decided to buy his evening meal at the pub.  The rain had been coming down in sheets as Nick ran between his flat and the pub; he was glad it wasn’t any further or he would have been soaked by the time he stepped inside.

He was at the bar when a young woman in a thick, black woollen coat and a nurse’s cap came in dripping.  The rain obviously hadn’t eased off any.  The publican smiled at her as she came in. ‘Evening Ruth, busy day?’

‘Like you wouldn’t believe’ she said taking off the soaked cap.  Her voice was confident with a tinge of exhausted.  ‘I’ve done ten visits, covered over a hundred miles and now I’m starving but before I go home for tea I could use a drink!’

She had a rosy complexion and reddish brown hair pinned up in a bun at the back of her head. 

‘It can’t have been any fun driving a hundred miles in today’s rain’ Nick said. 

‘Tell me about it, it was even worse up in the fells!’

‘What took you up there?’

‘She’s our local district nurse aren’t you lass’ cut in the barman. 

‘And this is my uncle Brian’ she said as if she was keen to explain their familiarity.

‘Would you like to join me for a bite to eat?  It would be great to have some company and I’ve got the table over by the fire so you might even get dry by the end of the evening.’

‘Thanks, that’s kind of you.’

‘Let me take your coat. I’ve ordered already’ said Nick and then to the Brian ‘Put your niece’s dinner on my bill, please.’

‘I’ll have the pie and peas please’ she said to her uncle ‘and a half of lager but I’ll pay for that myself.’

‘Pie and peas?  Are you sure that will be enough? You’re welcome to order something more substantial if you want’ said Nick.

‘Thanks but I’d be having an omelette back at my flat if it wasn’t for your kind offer.  I just came in for a quick half to relax after a busy day but I can’t afford to eat here too often.  Pie and peas will be fine, thanks.’

Ruth turned and held out the lapels of her thick, woollen coat so Nick could slip it off her shoulders revealing the rest of her distinctive, blue uniform with its white piping around the collar and sleeves.  The uniform dress was like a tent and probably designed that way to keep the older patients heart rates low. As a result it didn’t give Nick any clues as to her figure but, below her knees, where the dress gave way to tan nylon tights he could see she had slim calves and ankles.  Nick hung her coat on a big wooden stand near the door.  He was pleased she had agreed to join him although she was obviously not willing to be too much in his debt.  She was probably just very level headed; after all she looked very young to be a district nurse. 

Now they both had drinks they went back to the table next to the fireplace and soon there was steam coming off Ruth as she dried off.  As they swapped their stories Nick found out that Ruth was a year older than him and had done her nursing degree in Manchester.  Then she had worked in the city’s main hospital for a year before doing the extra year of training necessary to qualify as a district nurse.  She had been back here for two years now; first as an assistant and now, following the previous nurse’s retirement, she had the role to herself. 

‘I’d had my fill of city life and wanted to come back to Cumberland.’

‘You missed the rain?’

‘No!’ she smiled ‘but I missed my family a lot.  My brother and his wife have a son and a daughter now and I love spending time with them.  They still live at the farm where I grew up; they work the farm with my dad.  With all of them living at the farmhouse it’s full so I’ve got a flat here in the village above the doctor’s surgery.’

‘I’ve found it so quiet here that I must admit I miss the social life I had in London.  Don’t you miss you friends in Manchester?’

‘A bit but, after nursing college, we all scattered so my best friends are working in other cities now.  There was something about friendships in the city that I never got used to; they seemed so temporary but when I came back here everything and everyone around me felt permanent.  Imagine going to a shop in the city; each week you’d be served by someone different but here you know it will be an old friend.  It’s a lot easier to be lonely in a city than it is in a village where we all depend on one another’.

‘I guess you’re right’ Nick said even though he wasn’t sure that was true if you hadn’t grown up in the village.  He was wondering if Ruth had been hurt by the break-up of a relationship and coming home was like a form of sanctuary.

‘I love the hills too, on a dry day that is’ said Ruth.  ‘How about you?  I’m betting you work at Greyshaw.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Not that many people come to live round here unless they’re working there.  We used to reckon more than half the children from the area would leave Cumberland when they grew up so it was getting quieter and quieter until they decided to put their nuclear reactor here.  I should tell you we all have mixed feelings about it; Uncle Brian likes the extra business but we can’t help being a bit suspicious of it; after all they wouldn’t have built it in London would they?’

‘True, but rest assured we do everything we can to make it safe.’

‘What do you do there?’

‘I can’t really say too much about it.  I did a physics degree and then a PhD in London and it seemed the natural place to work if I want to be at the cutting edge of physics.’

‘I was more of a biology girl at school.’

Nick was starting to like her and thought it would be nice if they could create some chemistry between them; then they would have all the sciences covered.

‘Have you done any walking since you got here?  It’s just the best thing to do on a fine day’ asked Ruth.

‘I’m meaning to.  I’ve got as far as buying a pair of boots and one of those Wainwright books with all the pencil maps and sketches but it’s rained every day since then.’

‘It’s supposed to be fine at the weekend if you’d like to join me for a walk’ offered Ruth.

‘That would be great, thanks, but only if it stops raining.  If it’s like today I’ll take you to the pictures in Carlisle instead.’

‘It’s a deal!’ Ruth agreed.  ‘Meet me in the car park at the surgery; shall we say nine thirty on Saturday?

At least some good things come from it raining, Nick thought.  It had helped him to break the ice with Ruth.  If only it would stop now so they could enjoy the weekend.

Saturday dawned and it was dry but there was still a lot of low cloud and no sign of the sun.  At last he could try the Healey out with the canvas roof folded back.  When Nick arrived at the surgery Ruth was already there standing outside next to a black Morris Thousand that turned out to be hers.

‘Hello, nice car!’ she said.  She looked happier than he had seen her the other night.  She had let her hair down and it fell in waves around her shoulders.  She was wearing a snug, white polo necked sweater and baggy, light brown, corduroy trousers that showed she had a slim waist as well as the slim ankles he had noted in the pub.  Her trousers were so baggy that they didn’t give any more clues to her figure than her nurse’s uniform.  Her ankles, the ones he had imagined himself kissing, weren’t visible today; hidden under thick walking socks which had the cord trousers tucked inside them.

Ruth had a small rucksack which they stowed in the boot.  ‘I’ve made a flask of soup and some sandwiches so we can walk all day if you want; it’s set to come out fine later.’  Nick opened the passenger door of the Healey and Ruth hesitated as if working out how to get into a seat so low down.  She reached across to the seat with one hand, put the other on the dash and swung herself in using her arms to lower herself into the seat.  ‘Crikey you’re nearly on the road in this thing!’

‘Are you ok with having the roof down?’

‘I don’t know; I’ve never been in a sports car but I want to find out what it’s like.’

Nick climbed in and started the engine which growled noisily and the little car leapt into life as he shifted into first gear.  Ruth directed him onto the road to Wasdale Head.  Her patients were thinly spread over one hundred and twenty square miles and she knew the roads like the back of her hand.  When Nick looked at his passenger she was clearly enjoying the ride in the Healey.  Her hair was airborne and when she glanced at him it covered her eyes but her smile showed she didn’t care at all.  They were driving through woods now where the leaves had turned the same autumnal golden brown as Ruth’s hair. 

As their road left the woods Nick was confronted with the spectacular, brooding sight of Wastwater.  On his right were steep cliffs with the long deep black lake at their base.  Ruth told him the cliffs went almost as far down under the water as they towered above it.  There was no wind, at least not unless you were in an open top car speeding along the bumpy lanes, so the surface of Wastwater looked like a black mirror and reflected a perfect image of the cliffs:  Rivers of scree clinging to them and looking like they might come sliding down at any second.

Up ahead were jagged mountains and on the left lush green hills.  Ruth pointed to a conical mountain straight ahead ‘That’s Kirk Fell.  The view is brilliant on a fine day and I could see the top just then so we may be lucky.’

‘Is that where we’re going first?’

‘Yep, and then if the cloud has lifted we can walk further and do a big horseshoe called the Mosedale Round.’ 

Nick sped along the lane which kept bending this way and that as it followed the ancient boundaries of the farmer’s fields.  Soon enough they were in Wasdale Head which just amounted to a few stone farmsteads and an inn.  Nick retrieved their brown leather walking boots from the back of the Healey and passed Ruth’s to her.  She sat side on to the car changing her shoes, bending forwards to reach her feet with the suppleness of a young girl.  Nick could see she needed all that flexibility because her hair had formed a curtain around her face and she would never have found her bootlaces without having her head vertically above them.  He waited while she fastened the laces, her elbows moving slightly, her hands and feet completely obscured behind the unruly waves of red brown.

‘I’m done; just hope I can get up from down here’ she joked.

Nick offered her his hands but she lifted her elbows slightly to the side rather than reaching out and clasping his hands:  He was being invited to pick her up.  He bent down and put his hands under each arm with his palms against her sides and lifted her out of the seat.  She gave a little squeal of pleasure and kicked her