Independence and Deterrence , commissioned by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, continues the story of Britain's atomic project begun in Britain and Atomic Energy 1939-1945 , and covers the years from 1945 to the first British bomb test at the end of 1952.
The aim of this book is to set the 1957 Windscale accident in its historical context in the immediate post-war period and the early days of the Cold War, to describe the event and its consequences and to evaluate it from the vantage point of 1990.