ABSTRACT
The civil nuclear story is far more positive, though marred by some calamities that owe more to human stupidity than malice. The Wind scale fire was the worst reactor disaster in the world until the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Originally a military installation established to help the UK achieve its status as a military nuclear power, by the mid-1950s Wind scale was emerging from the post war twilight as the home of Britain's civil nuclear generating industry. When the piles had been designed little was known about the effects of Wigner energy, named after its Hungarian discoverer. The State of Pennsylvania's preparedness for a nuclear accident was criticised by local politicians because the authorities did not keep potassium iodide in stock. The Chernobyl nuclear plant is at Pripyat, not far from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Evacuation of the population in the vicinity of Chernobyl began within 36 hours.
