Wow.. I hadn't heard of that. Interesting read. They had such a cavalier attitude about nuclear power back then.
A reactor (intended for low security areas!) running on highly enriched uranium, protected by effectively a single control rod that had to be raised by hand to get it connected.. What could go wrong.
Still, the Soviets were worse at early nuclear craziness with their Rorsats. The reactor cores of several of those are still orbiting our planet today and will come down in the far future! One crashed on Canada due to a failure and polluted a luckily sparsely populated area.
