Last updated 15:57, Wednesday, 26 March 2008

THE man who led heroic efforts to put out the Windscale Fire in 1957 and prevent Britain’s worst atomic accident from becoming even more serious has died in Australia at the age of 90.

Tom Tuohy, Windscale’s deputy general manager at the time, took responsibility for the massive fire-fighting operation as radioactivity spewed into the atmosphere from one of the two piles.

They were being used to produce plutonium in the British government’s top secret collaboration with the United States to produce the H.bomb in the cold war arms race.

Along with other workers in his team, Tom was said to have taken personal risks to prevent an explosion the size of a nuclear bomb by ordering gallons of water to be turned on rather than allow the fire to burn out on its own.

It was a decision that prevented the Windscale Fire from becoming a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl nearly 30 years later.

When the fire was discovered, Tom was at home on leave, looking after his family who all had ‘flu.

A statement from the Windscale site yesterday said: “Given the critical emergency being faced by his team, Tom immediately headed into Windscale to the charge hoist on the pile.

“He donned full protective equipment and scaled the 80 feet to the top of the reactor building.

“During the incident, he had to repeat this procedure several times to check on the reactor, before making critical decisions on how to extinguish the fire.

“Having looked at all the alternatives and exhausted other options, Mr Tuohy ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief. Once again, he scaled the reactor and ordered the team to turn water on to the fire.

“It was an incredibly dangerous operation, but a brave decision which proved to be the turning point in a potential disaster.

“Tom continued to monitor the fire via an inspection plate for a number of hours and said ‘first the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down I went up to check several times until I was satisfied the fire was out. Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold.

“I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out. I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully, but if you’re staring straight at the core of a shut-down reactor you’re going to get quite a bit of radiation’.”

There were suspicions that the Macmillan government covered up the causes of the fire and that officials made the Americans think that Tom’s staff had been responsible.

Tom is said to have responded: “I thought they (the officials) were a shower of bastards.”

Born at Wallsend in the North East, Tom was promoted to Windscale general manager and was awarded a CBE in 1969. He lived in Beckermet for many years and was married three times.

His second wife, Lilian Barnes, was a Millom girl.