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1. The battery and the military context
1.1 Context
The ministerial decision to build British atomic bombs was taken in January 1947, despite the post-war policy of austerity, and revealed to Parliament in May 1948. Time was of the essence, with the USSR having detonated its first atomic bomb in September 1949.
A process and site had to be chosen to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
The site chosen was that of a former munitions factory, in a then sparsely populated area of Cumberland on the Irish Sea, called Sellafield, but renamed Windscale.
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The battery and the military context
Wigner energy and graphite annealing
References
- (1) - Accident at Windscale No 1 Pile on 10 th Octo- ber, 1957 : - — Rapport de synthèse de la commission d'enquête présenté au Parlement par le Premier ministre, nov. 1957 ; — UKAEA Committee of Inquiry into the Windscale Accident, oct. 1957. Rapport technique complet, déclassifié en janv. 1988....
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