
In 1957 one of the two reactors built at Windscale was destroyed by fire, in the world's first major nuclear accident. This book describes the fire and what followed, and considers its causes, effects and political importance. It throws a revealing new light on an important event...

The aim of this book is to set the 1957 Windscale accident in its historical context in the immediate post-war period and the early days of the Cold War, to describe the event and its consequences and to evaluate it from the vantage point of 1990.