Windscale

April 5 1946: One of the heat exchangers nears completion at Windscale Photograph: Reg Birkett/Keystone/Getty

October 17 1956: Queen Elizabeth II at Calder Hall, Windscale, to perform the official opening ceremony Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

February 25 1957: A technician monitors the equipment at Calder Hall in Windscale Photograph: Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty

February 25 1957: An employee on the charging floor above the reactor core Photograph: Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty

Gauging radiation danger at Windscale Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

October 19 1957: British nuclear physicist William Penney heads a team of experts into an inquiry into the leakage of radioactive dust at the Windscale plutonium factory. From left to right, Penney, Professor J M Kay, D E H Pierson, Dr B S J Schonland and Professor Jack Diamond Photograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty

September 1 1958: Cows graze near the inoperative nuclear power plant at Windscale. Days after the fire, increasing levels of iodine-131, which can cause thyroid cancer, were found in local milk and a ban was imposed on all milk from the area until November 23. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

August 16 1999: The 400 ft chimney of Windscale's Pile One, damaged by fire in 1957 Photograph: Don McPhee/Guardian

August 16 1999: Dr Rob Dogson at the pile face, where a long term programme of work continues to dismantle and remove for treatment and storage the core of Pile One at Windscale Photograph: Don McPhee/Guardian

August 16 1999: Decommissioning Windscale's advanced gas-cooled reactor inside the WAGR 'golf ball' to remove the 500 tonnes of materials of the reactor core and pressure vessel Photograph: Don McPhee/Guardian