The Colonel's Plute

The Colonel's Plute is set in the 1970s and 1980s, when plutonium was thought to be vital to the UK's nuclear energy programme. The book includes short but important appearances by famous people, such as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan, Tony Benn, and Arthur Scargill, as well as members of the IRA, and Greenpeace, the leading environmentalist group at the time.

The story centres, however, upon ordinary people: a family with working links to Sellafield, where much of the UK's plutonium is still stored (until some use is found for it). The head of the family is Sergeant Len Stanton, a policeman, who left the West Midlands with his family for a better paid job with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary; a healthier lifestyle for all of them in the Lake District. Len's wife, Rita, died of cancer, and Len is becoming an increasingly embittered man.

Len's son-in-law, Tony Miles, is a process worker working with radioactive materials and married to Jenny. They have a seven-year-old son, Jamie. The boy has leukaemia and is being treated at the world-famous Christie Hospital in Manchester. Jenny is convinced that Jamie's condition has been caused by her husband's work. Len begins to think this may be true, persuaded by a local doctor, who has pointed the finger at Sellafield as the cause of a cancer cluster he claims to have identified in a small village close to the sprawling Sellafield site. The doctor's claims are picked up by the national press, causing panic among those with children, or expecting them.

All of this is of little interest to Gaddafi who is desperate to obtain plutonium, convinced that it will give him more authority at home and the status abroad to help him become a major international, respected figure. He has tried to obtain plutonium from several countries but without success. He turns his attention to Sellafield, which is known to have the biggest stockpile of plutonium in the world. He approaches the IRA for assistance, reminding its leaders that he has provided them with finance and weapons for decades. "Now it is payback time," he tells the IRA representative attending the colonel's 25th anniversary celebration of his coup in Libya. Eventually, after a lot of soul searching, a deal is reached.

Many of the cases of plute held in the Sellafield plutonium store have been there for decades, and potentially explosive nitrogen gas has built up in them. If this happened, plutonium, in powder form, could spread over the countryside, the government deciding that all the cans must be repackaged. It is not going to be easy. It will involve moving the cans around the Sellafield site and in and out of makeshift storage facilities, providing an obvious opportunity for theft.

Len Stanton sees what's going on but turns a blind eye to it. The IRA succeeds in stealing a small amount of plute for the colonel. It is shipped to Libya and promptly impounded as soon as the ship arrives in Libya. The source of the information about its movements is Michael Quinn, thought by Greenpeace to be one of their most enthusiastic supporters (and by the IRA as one of their own silent members).

He is in fact employed by America's Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. His main contact in Libya is Captain Hassan al-Rida, the colonel's aide-de-camp, the leader of a group of young Libyan officers who want Gaddafi removed, dead or alive. They believe he has dissipated his nation's oil wealth supporting other countries rather than improving the conditions of his own people.

President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher have been kept informed of events by the CIA and it is they who tell my readers how my book ends and what happens to those who made an appearance in it.