His scientific achievements were monumental, but people like Ken McGinley found it hard to have any sympathy. “The fact is that people like Penney and his ilk destroyed thousands of lives, and I can’t really forgive him for that,” was McGinley’s only comment.
Lord Penney’s funeral took place in the village of East Hendred, 20 miles from Oxford, where he and his wife retired to in 1976.
He lived in some splendour in a substantial 17th century cottage in Cat Street with white plaster walls, hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, manicured lawns and substantial of gardens.
As the “Father of Britain’s H-bomb” he had been showered with honours and took up several academic positions including Rector of Imperial College.
He remained shy and secretive to the end of his life and rarely talked about the atomic bomb tests that had brought him so much prestige and fame. But he was said to have retained a self-deprecating sense of humour, despite the horrors his work conjured up.
One example of this came at the height of his fame in 1958. Harold Macmillan invited him to a drinks party and asked him how many megaton bombs it would take to destroy Britain, to which Penney replied: “Five or six will knock us out, or to be on the safe side seven or eight,” adding with his characteristic grin: “I’ll ‘ave another gin and tonic, if you’d be so kind.”
His old Los Alamos colleague, Professor Michael Moore, believed that Penney never got over the death of his first wife. “I believe this is what drove him to achieve what he did,” he recalled.
“He had a naturally sunny disposition which changed after her death. Penney was always marked down for greatness and he never had any of the pangs of conscious about the use of the atomic bomb that most of the rest of us had.
“He was a British patriot through and through, even though I did hear talk that the Americans regarded him as ‘one of their own’ from the time he went to America to study in the early 1930s.
“Certainly he always went along with everything the Americans said. They trusted him because he was never tainted by any connection with the Communist cause prevalent in Cambridge and other universities at the time.
“They were particularly impressed that Penney had cut off all ties with Hyman Levy, his mathematics tutor at Imperial College, who was a well-known communist.
“Of all the British scientists, it was Penney that people like Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, wanted most to work in America. But Penney would never leave the country he loved.”
Penney liked gardening, and could often be seen digging for potatoes in a small vegetable patch to the left of the house. Locals called him “Bill”, his wife was known as “Lady P” and they, as you might expect, were pillars of the community.
Before he died, he burned all his private papers and tellingly left a substantial sum in his will to build a play park for local children.
It was later officially opened by his wife Lady Eleanor Penney in memory of her husband. She walked down a footpath through a crowd of villagers and children to open the new Penney Play-park. She cut a ribbon across the gate and unveiled a plaque commemorating the opening. She told the local newspaper: “Bill loved children and always found them much easier company than their elders.”
THE ROAD TO CHERNOBYL
The Australian Royal Commission left Britain with its tail between its legs. The “killer punch” that McClelland had cherished never materialised.
After all the windy rhetoric his commission had discovered that 30 badly-leaking drums of radio-active waste were dumped off the West Australian coast; one hundred aborigines walked barefoot over nuclear-contaminated ground because boots they had been given didn't fit; and a 1953 British nuclear test that allegedly caused a 'black mist' should not have been fired.
These were slim pickings for McClelland who was denied a triumphal return to Australia, and even less for McGinley and his veterans to get their teeth into. The Ministry of Defence appeared bomb-proof; there was no exposed flank to attack. Once again the veteran’s campaign began to sink in a sea of indifference.
Fate took a hand on April 26, 1986 at 1.23am Moscow time, when an explosion occurred in the No 4 unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power station 18km from the town of Chernobyl and 2km from the “company town” of Pripyat.
It was the most serious accident in the history of nuclear power. A series of blunders by operators involved in safety checks led to the withdrawal of all 211 control rods from the reactor.
This in turn led to a sudden loss of water used to cool 1,661 uranium fuel assemblies that were set in pressure pipes surrounded by 1,700 tons of graphite blocks. This in turn caused a power surge creating a huge chemical explosion which blew the top off the reactor and spewed out vast quantities of radiation.
Conservative estimates put the energy release at around 50 million curies. This represents about 4,000 times as much activity as was released in the 1957 Windscale fire, and a million times as much as 1976 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania caused by a partial meltdown in a nuclear reactor.
But because of mismanagement and a lack of monitoring equipment no-one on the site at first appeared to realise the wreck of reactor No 4 was leaking vast quantities of radioactive substances into the environment.
In the immediate aftermath about 150 people on site suffered from radiation sickness and 31 died of a variety of causes, including radiation, burns and falling masonry.
In the surrounding population most people were protected from the immediate effects because they were indoors (most in their beds), although many lived in wooden buildings which did not give as much protection as more conventional European dwellings. A woman, who was in her garden at the time, did experience symptoms of radiation sickness (sudden vomiting and extreme tiredness) within hours of the explosion.
More than 30 separate fires were caused by the explosions and there are many stories of heroic actions by the men who dealt with the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
Within five minutes the paramilitary fire brigade serving the station arrived on the scene. This was very soon reinforced by the Chernobyl town brigade who immediately attacked the fire on the roof of the turbine hall.
Without a thought for their own safety, and with no protective clothing, the fireman successfully prevented the fire from damaging unit No 3, which was separated from No 4 by just a wall.
There was no telling the consequences if that the wall had been breached. The main, and most dangerous, core fire was dealt with by 6.35. Six of the firemen were later to die of acute radiation sickness, and many others were severely affected.
In the early hours after the explosions, the health of those on site was the principle concern of the emergency authorities. Evacuation of the town of Pripyat didn’t begin until noon on April 27.
However, iodine preparations had been given to children at school on the morning of April 26, and to the rest of the town in the afternoon.
At first the well-paid company workers were stoical about what was happening. They calmly went about their business as usual. But by the late afternoon something akin to panic was beginning to set in.
Long queues formed outside emergency stations where the iodine was being distributed, and there were reports of people burning their mouths and even poisoning themselves through lack of instruction.
As the day wore on water carts began spraying the streets and stalls selling vegetables and other foodstuffs were removed.
The enormity of the disaster became more evident as night fell and the sky glowed red in the distance. At daybreak, the authorities finally ordered the evacuation of the town.