AEA Technology, the high-tech spin-off from Britain鈥檚 nuclear industry, is
trying to find out why one of its labs came close to exploding. On 9 September,
staff within a 100-metre radius of a lab at Harwell in Oxford were evacuated and
a nearby primary school closed because of a build-up of 鈥渦nstable silver
compounds鈥� in a flask.
The emergency arose during the recycling of silver from foils in old smoke
detectors. AEA Technology says that radiation would not have been released by
any explosion.