Poisoned legacy: why the future of power can’t be nuclear

Mounting tensions with Russia, a global pandemic and a reckless scramble for nuclear energy: the echoes of 1957 are alarming - we would do well to heed them

On 10 October 1957, Harold Macmillan sent a letter to President Dwight Eisenhower. The question he asked his US counterpart was: What are we going to do about these Russians?" The launch of the Sputnik satellite six days earlier had carried with it the threat that Soviet military technology would eclipse that of the west. The prime minister was hoping to boost British nuclear capabilities, and was desperate for US cooperation.

On that same day, however, the UK's most advanced nuclear project went up in flames - putting the knowledge and bravery of its best scientists to the test, and threatening England's peaceful countryside with a radiological disaster.