Tom Tuohy was deputy works manager at Windscale in Cumbria, now Sellafield, when a fire broke out at a primitive nuclear reactor on the site in October, 1957.

He donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled 80 feet to the top of the Pile 1 reactor where he reported no flames, just a dull red luminescence.

And when the team decided to deliver water for 30 hours to help douse the flames Mr Tuohy later said: "I went up several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out.

"I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully, but if you're standing staring straight at the core of a shut-down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation."

He later told a television documentary recalling the incident: "I never thought about my own safety.

"I just knew there were things I could do, and I got on and did them."

Mr Tuohy came from Wallsend and was educated at St Cuthbert's grammar school in Newcastle, and Reading University where he studied chemistry.

He began work in the atomic industry at the end of the second world war, first as a health physics manager at Springfields nuclear fuel production plant in Lancashire before joining Windscale in 1949.

He became deputy works manager in 1954 and then general manager in 1958.
He was awarded a CBE in 1969.

Mr Tuohy, born on November 7, 1917, was married three times and died in Australia at the age of 90.

He is survived by his first wife, two sons from that marriage, and a son and daughter from his second marriage.