Revealed: UK nuclear tests on workers | UK News | The Observer

Revealed: UK nuclear tests on workers

Sellafield memos uncover fears over legality of making volunteers drink radioactive isotopes

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday April 22, 2007
The Observer

Workers at Sellafield, the nuclear plant at the centre of the missing body parts scandal, were subjected to secret Cold War experiments in which they were exposed to radiation, The Observer can reveal.

One experiment, described in a confidential memo, involved volunteers drinking doses of caesium 134, a radioactive isotope that was released in fatal quantities following the Chernobyl disaster. Other experiments involved exposing volunteers to uranium, strontium 85, iodine 132 and plutonium