The Dublin Community Blog

This coming Sunday and Monday nights sees Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, screening a controversial documentary depicting a radioactive cloud reaching Ireland after an explosion at the nuclear reprocessing plant in Sellafield. This documentary taps into a long standing Irish fear of the nuclear plant in Sellafield, and the harm that it could cause our country in the event of an accident.

The drama contains scenes of traffic chaos as Dubliners try to flee the radioactivity before it arrives on the east coast. Gerald Fleming, an RTE weather forecaster, will appear in the docudrama, which also features fake news bulletins that were shot in RTE and at BBC News 24 studios.

When news reaches Ireland of the nuclear explosion, panic sets in and people evacuate from Dublin and the east coast. One scene shows traffic chaos involving hundreds of cars choking up the roads. The Irish government orders troops to control the situation.

This sounds to me to be something very similar to the movie 24, where a virus causes panic amongst the British Public.

The controversy is being caused by the fact that RTE has refused to comply with requests from the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, who are worried that the RTE drama is going to portray an unrealistic scenario and frighten viewers. The RPII wanted to be involved in the production of the drama in order to ensure that factual advice was offered in the program, as an aid to inform people in the event that such a scenario does ever occur in real life.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. It is now too late for the RPII to get involved, as the program is due to screen in a few days time, unless they manage to have the show pulled in its entirety.