For a time the United Kingdom outstripped even the United States with its nuclear reactor program, even though it began from scratch three years later and with few resources. The British effort was a joint one between the scientists at Harwell—by the 1950s one of the premier nuclear laboratories of the world—and the engineers at Risley, a talented and aggressive bunch. Harwell and Risley bickered and snarled, much as their mismatched leaders, John Cockcroft and Christopher Hinton, did, but there proved to be an uncommonly productive alliance.
So I enjoyed reading official historian Margaret Gowing’s lament about how physically difficult that joint effort was:
The geographical separation of Harwell and Risley made this collaboration exhausting. There was no direct rail service, roads were poor and car journeys at this time, often in pre-war unheated cars, took many hours; people remember driving home desperate with fatigue. Girls from the car service would regularly set off from Risley at 5 p.m. to drive the long miles to Windscale or Harwell often with snow, fog or frozen roads.
Gowing, Margaret. 1974. Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945-52: Vol. 2, Policy Execution. Macmillan, London, p. 358.
