A chance lunchtime meeting with a wartime colleague in 1958 led Arnold to apply for a position at the Ministry of Health . The Director of Establishments there asked if he might forward her details to his counterpart at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority ( UKAEA ) , which he knew was expanding due to the 1957 Windscale fire , there being multiple inquiries into the disaster . To her surprise , her secretariat skills in writing and coordinating reports and studies were exactly what the UKAEA was looking for , and she was hired . After a security background check , she commenced work on 2 January 1959 , with the Authority Health and Safety Branch ( AHSB ) . She worked on the Veale Committee on Training in Radiation Safety , and , after it wound up , as personal assistant to the director , Andrew MacLean . In 1967 , Arnold was abruptly reassigned as the UKAEA Records Officer , vice Margaret Gowing , who had published the first volume of the history of the British nuclear weapons programme , '' Britain and Atomic Energy '' ( 1964 ) . In 1966 , Gowing had become a Reader in Contemporary History at the new University of Kent , Canterbury , covering scientific , technical , economic and social history , and was only working at the UKAEA part-time . The UKAEA therefore decided that Gowing needed an assistant . There was some urgency ; the Public Records Act 1967 had reduced the period in which public records were closed to the public from fifty to thirty years . This meant that unless deemed " sensitive " , the records of the UKAEA would begin to be transferred to the Public Record Office and become available to the public in the 1970s . Getting the records in order and examined for secret material was an enormous and time-consuming task . Under the 1958 US – UK Mutual Defence Agreement , American secrets had been shared with the United Kingdom , so the job also involved liaison with American archivists . To be closer to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell , and the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston , she sold her house in London and bought one on the outskirts of Oxford , from which she could more conveniently reach these establishments via the A34
Windscale fire
Windscale fire
Lorna Arnold