Having predicted the 1973 oil crisis, Murrell became increasingly concerned by the hazards posed by nuclear energy and weapons. She began to research this highly technical field. In 1978, she wrote a paper entitled "What Price Nuclear Power?" in which she challenged the economics of the civil nuclear industry. After the 1979 US accident at Three Mile Island, she turned her attention to safety aspects, and homed in on the problem of radioactive waste, the disposal of which she concluded was the industry's Achilles' heel. In 1982, the Department of the Environment published a white paper (Cmnd 8607) on the British Government's policy on radioactive waste management. Murrell, now in her late 70s, wrote a critique of it, which she developed into her submission "An Ordinary Citizen's View of Radioactive Waste Management" to the first formal planning inquiry into a nuclear power plant in Britain, the Sizewell B Pressurised Water Reactor in Suffolk.