How valid were the criticisms that the 1984 Old Dalby nuclear flask test was too staged?

[The Johnster]

If it went over the Crimea, that's pretty terrifying if you don't know what's coming!

[Bert Cheese]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The US had a nuclear arms storage facility at Caerwent, between Newport and Chepstow visible from the A48 road and rail-served by a branch from Portskewett, worked by an STJ trip.  This was also marked as a blank space on the OS maps.

 

Friend of mine worked for Rank Xerox as a photocopying machine repair engineer (ink changer and cleaner), and had a fine old time with a little Ford Escort van running around South Wales and the Bristol area sorting them out, either by contract or in response to a call from a customer.  The contract jobs included a regular 6-monthly service of one on this base.  Same rigmarole each time; get to the gate barrier, explain to a US Marine with a big gun what his business was, only to be told that 'that building does not exist, sir!'.  He would then drive back into Caerwent village and phone his boss to explain the situation.  He would then go and have lunch in a pub, because he knew it would take his boss about an hour and half to get back to him; what procedure went on at that level he was not party to.  He was simply told 'don't ask, meaning, seriously, don't ask!'.

 

He'd then go back up to the gate, where he would be given a little paper badge that was supposed to turn a different colour after a specified number of Roentgens and an armed escort of Marines in two jeeps, one ahead and one behind his little Escort, took him to the non-existant building.  Two of them, big lads with big guns and no sense of humour, would accompany him in to the non-existant building where they remained on each side of him at all times.  He's only a little skinny wiry bloke; think 'The Great Gonzo' off the Muppets. 

 

Now, this is where it got interesting.  Inside the non-existant building was the non-existant photocopying machine, still not with full inks from the last non-visit because it hadn't been used (of course, a machine that does not exist in a building which also does not exist would not be expected to get much use).  It was not inserted into a sealed gap in a non-existant internal dividing wall between a non-existant 'clean' and an equally non-existant 'dirty' area, so that non-existant paper was not fed in on the 'clean' side and the copy print not taken out on the non-existant 'dirty' side, where it definitley would not be read, shredded, and bagged up in a non-existant bag for decontamination prior to 'disposal'.

 

Dave had to access both sides of the machine to carry out his servicing, and each time he went into the non-existant dirty area he had to strip off, accompanied by the marines, and climb into a non-existant full NBC suit with non-existant filtered BA, and then when he came back out, with the marines (they were highly existant, incidentally), they had to strip off again, bag up the non-existant NBC suits for decontamination, and undertake a non-existant full nuclear decontamination shower.  This would take place five times during he service, a normally 20-minute routine job that would take the rest of the day; he rarely left the site before dark.  At least fifteen NBC suits and sets of BA with battery packs would be used, and the experience of being closesly monitored and sharing showers with the marines was pretty daunting! 

 

He would then be escorted back to the gate by the two jeeps, and be required to sign some sort of official document to the effect that he had not seen any evidence of any such building, machine, or other paraphinalia during the time he had not been visiting this non-existant base.  He would also be asked for the paper badge, which never changed colour, back, and given a going over with a geiger counter, which woud obligingly make the clicking noises as in all good movies, and be told 'that's normal, sir, nothing to worry about', except on one occasion when there was a bit of a panic and he was kept in an isolation chamber 'just as a precaution. nothing to worry about sir' for 24 hours observation, with American cable tv and, he said, seriously top-notch food provided.  Following this, the geiger counter clicked the same amount as it had before, and he was told the same as before 'perfectly normal, sir, more radiation from a luminous watch, nothing to worry about' after 24 rather fraught hours during which there had clearly been something to worry about.  

 

That was his last visit.  Never told this, but he assumed he'd had his maximum safe dose of magic moonbeams, and someone else in the company took it on; he didn't miss it.  Or the marines...                         

 

Sounds plausible, and that I got off lightly when visiting some interesting locations around Berkshire & Wiltshire as a youngish refrigeration engineer back in the early 2000's...

The usual routine involved having your vehicle searched then driven to site by a pair of armed types with me being very quiet in the passenger seat, I was of course cleared and booked in already.

"Follow your escort, look at the back of his head not left or right and certainly not through any windows and do not speak" was something I got used to after a while.

I once mistakenly opened a door for a scientist coming the other way in a corridor before my guide could stop me, just being polite but this bloke dropped to the floor and huddled behind the door...seriously!

Realising I'd messed up I apologised profusely and things were sorted, I was told that some people in this place were very clever but on the edge of sanity which was quite reassuring...

 

A few stories fom other places best not mentioned too...all this usually just to service a water cooler or paint aluminium fan blades black on outdoor units so they didn't reflect sunlight.

 

[The Johnster]

I had the ‘look at the back of the escort’s head’ routine while working for a while in the 80s for a firm of industrial cleaning contractors at the ROF factory in Llanishen, Cardiff, and that was a civilian establishment!   The job was deep cleaning of a cobalt shop; apparently the fissionable material in a bomb has to be encased in this stuff.  Full NBC and filtered BA (the firm had these but the ROF wanted us to use theirs).  Cobalt is a horrible material, and I felt sorry for the blokes who had to machine it; manages to be greasy, slippery, and dusty at the same time, and, NBC or no, gets everywhere; takes a good bit of elbow grease to get it off surfaces as well.  On the positive side, their canteen was excellent, and free!   Took a team of four of us six weeks. 

[5BarVT]

On 02/03/2023 at 22:30, Cowley 47521 said:

Ah ok thanks for that.

So what was the substantial bit lump of equipment that was ejected forwards then. Any thoughts?

School friend’s father was the CEGB project manager for the Old Dalby ‘test’.

Don’t know if it was the ‘substantial lump of equipment’ but there was a camera on board recording out of the front that was ejected by an explosive charge on impact.

Another interesting ‘fact’ is that the way it was controlled was the power control was tied down and the engine ‘released’ and an AWS set up had been installed so that it could be brought to a stand st the last minute had it been desired.

Paul.

[slilley]

18 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

School friend’s father was the CEGB project manager for the Old Dalby ‘test’.

Don’t know if it was the ‘substantial lump of equipment’ but there was a camera on board recording out of the front that was ejected by an explosive charge on impact.

Another interesting ‘fact’ is that the way it was controlled was the power control was tied down and the engine ‘released’ and an AWS set up had been installed so that it could be brought to a stand st the last minute had it been desired.

Paul.

Full details of the modifications made to 46009 and indeed 46023 will be in a new book The Peaks, Classes 44,45,and 46 due out in a few months time from Crecy Publishing.

[C126]

Reading Stephen Poole's excellent 'Behind the crumbling edge...' (2002), I came across the following (p.20) which I thought might be of interest to readers if this thread.  If anyone can add to it, I hope s/he will:

 

"From time to time there were mock incidents to test response times and communication channels.  I was involved with these as a Controller and later as an Assistant Station Manager.  One such was held at Lenham in Kent and was a mock nuclear accident.  Nuclear flask traffic was a regular feature on the South Eastern Division, taking spent fuel from Dungeness Power Station and the naval dockyard at Chatham to Sellafield.  The need to have clear reporting lines and rehearsed responses was vital, mainly to allay public disquiet.  In reality, it would take an unimaginable force to rupture a nuclear flask and, in fact, a new flask carrier had been derailed at Gillingham several times in 1977.  The Lenham exercise was necessarily based on the so-called 'worst case scenario' in which a radioactive leak was supposed to have occurred.  Of course, at Lenham we only pretended there had been a crash - unlike the much publicised and televised British Nuclear Fuels stage-managed collision of July 1984, when they ran a class 46 diesel at speed into a flask carrier in order to show how safe the flask was."

 

[simon b]

1 hour ago, C126 said:

Reading Stephen Poole's excellent 'Behind the crumbling edge...' (2002)

 

A thoroughly good read, the part about freight on the SR has some very interesting tales.   

[The Stationmaster]

23 minutes ago, C126 said:

Reading Stephen Poole's excellent 'Behind the crumbling edge...' (2002), I came across the following (p.20) which I thought might be of interest to readers if this thread.  If anyone can add to it, I hope s/he will:

 

"From time to time there were mock incidents to test response times and communication channels.  I was involved with these as a Controller and later as an Assistant Station Manager.  One such was held at Lenham in Kent and was a mock nuclear accident.  Nuclear flask traffic was a regular feature on the South Eastern Division, taking spent fuel from Dungeness Power Station and the naval dockyard at Chatham to Sellafield.  The need to have clear reporting lines and rehearsed responses was vital, mainly to allay public disquiet.  In reality, it would take an unimaginable force to rupture a nuclear flask and, in fact, a new flask carrier had been derailed at Gillingham several times in 1977.  The Lenham exercise was necessarily based on the so-called 'worst case scenario' in which a radioactive leak was supposed to have occurred.  Of course, at Lenham we only pretended there had been a crash - unlike the much publicised and televised British Nuclear Fuels stage-managed collision of July 1984, when they ran a class 46 diesel at speed into a flask carrier in order to show how safe the flask was."

 

One such exercise had a very interesting outcome.  The BR Control office concerned called the contact number it had been given for the exercise (a Police Control Room direct line) and found the number didn't exist.  So they then rang 999 and were connected to the Police Control Room (and checked to make sure it was r the right one) and gave the message about the train collision plus the exercise codeword.  The Police operator didn't know what the codeword meant and asked what it had to do with the collision so all the BR Controller could say was that it was part of the message they'd had from a signal box.   Seems the Police then spent some time trying to find out what teh word meant before sending any units to the site.

 

Live exercises were always useful for identifying the unexpected holes in procedures but that was why they existed.  A particular trick some of the emergency service chiefs liked to include in Dangerous Goods exercises was to see how many of their people arriving at the scene would be put out of action before bothering to ask what sort of Dangeous Goods the train involved had been carrying.

 

Table top exercises also had their uses but in my experience there could be someone there who despite being told how long things would take would simpl refused to believe it.  In one case a real incident exactly replicated what had happened in a previous table top exercise, and  inevitably the local Govt people (not the emergency services) immediatelyo claim they had never been told 'such & such' would take so long, despite being at the earlier table top exercise.

 

I alwayd s enjoyed being involved in setting-up exercises as we tended not to rehearse various thinsg we planned from a railway viewpoint.  which is hw we found out just how difficult it was to couple a 15X unit to an HST even out in the open let alone in the originally planned location in a tunnel.

[kevinlms]

On 06/03/2023 at 23:38, Ian Smeeton said:

 

The course organiser  came in to the bar having dropped off the teams at various points with instructions to make their way back to the hotel without getting caught.

 

 

 

Cue hasty exit and gathering up the teams before they managed to get themselves in to trouble.

 

Regards

 

Ian

So he decided not to see if they could actually make their way, back to the hotel without getting caught!

 

A wise man - the Americans would not have been that understanding, potentially trigger happy.

[drduncan]

On 05/03/2023 at 12:26, Northmoor said:

That would have been Greenwich Naval College (now part of Greenwich University) which had one to train engineering officers for submarines.  The locals signs said the Borough was a nuclear-free zone, but they were mistaken! 

I seem to recall the map of the Greenwich nuclear free zone showed the boundary going round the RN college…

[caradoc]

19 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Live exercises were always useful for identifying the unexpected holes in procedures but that was why they existed.

 

One of the table-toppers I attended was held at Berwick on Tweed, the scenario being that a collision/derailment had occurred at Marshall Meadows, right on the ECML England/Scotland border. Part of the reason for choosing that location was to test how the different English and Scottish agencies, responsibilities and indeed legal systems would work together, and who would have supremacy. I do recall being impressed by the number and status of attendees, which included helicopter pilots in their flying gear!