One of the aspects of British reactor pioneer Christopher Hinton that endears him to me is his ethical rigor. Here he is in 1955 writing to Harry Railing, joint managing director of General Electric Corporation (the UK version, unrelated to the American firm), one of the four companies selected to build a big nuclear power reactor push:
Thank you for your letter of December 16th. I know exactly how you feel over this business of security clearance. On the other hand, it is a procedure which is universally applied to people who are going to receive secret atomic energy information and even in those cases where we regard it as being no more than a formality it is embarrassing to omit the procedure. Your opposite number in at least two of the other groups who are working on nuclear power plant design, together with several of their main Board directors, have been through the procedure, and even if you find it slightly troublesome I hope that you will agree to let it go forward. I need hardly tell you that I myself was most rigorously submitted to it.
Hinton, Christopher. 1955. Hinton to Railing, Dec. 19, 1955. AB 19/17. National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom.