5. Afterword

With hindsight, an accident on the Windscale piles was bound to happen sooner or later, given the pressing schedule and the sheer scale of the requirements of the Defense program, with its shortage of organization, personnel and equipment, and insufficient knowledge and understanding of complex phenomena with which we had to live as best we could. The pressure was enormous, as these Windscale stacks were the bottleneck of the entire British defense program.

The almost accidental accident in October 1957 on Pile 1 had far fewer external consequences than might have been feared. It was salutary in the sense that it marked the end of an era of risk-taking in the UK: industrial development must now be based on well-targeted research. Conscientiousness and a sense of duty are no longer enough. The acquisition and application of a genuine safety culture is becoming a...