ABSTRACT
A report on a Soviet nuclear disaster occurring in the U.S.S.R. has frequently been quoted as a case example to show that nuclear energy is unsafe. Whereas in the West, it is argued, disasters have been prevented just in the nick of time, in the U.S.S.R. a disaster really happened. The disaster has sometimes even been represented as an explosion of a nuclear reactor, seemingly giving credence to the notion that reactors can explode. This report has been dismissed by nuclear experts in the West, because an explosion involving radioactive materials thrown up into the air would have been detected by equipment flown in western intelligence aeroplanes, if not indeed by the cows at Windscale. Waste from such a reactor would eventually have to be treated, or disposed of in some way. In appreciable quantity, such waste is hot, in the literal sense of producing much heat.
