I would love to find out as much info as possible!! In the years following World War II, Britain was desperate to get the H-bomb in order to be on an equal footing with the newly powerful Americans. In the end, the fire got the last laugh because it even consumed the oxygen in the CO2. MOX-fuel production is being criticized by many countries, as the increased availability of plutonium also increases the danger of nuclear weapons’ proliferation. This book describes the fire and what followed, and considers its causes, effects and political importance. Phase 1 of decommissioning ended in 1999. In Britain alone, it is estimated to have caused 240 cancers; half of them have since become fatal. The typical drop in core temperature that should have followed the Wigner release did not happen; rather, at least one thermocouple was registering a steady rise in temperature. After flooding the core with water, it was evident that both graphite and uranium fuel elements had been involved in a fire. Unsuccessful, the flames slowly died away, then the glow receded. The Windscale accident is classified at level 5 on nuclear accident scale of severity, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident, Chernobyl being located at level 7. In a last ditch effort, the reactor was cleared of everyone except the plant manager and the fire chief, and the air was shut off. On the morning of Friday, October 11, 1957, workers at the nuclear reactor Windscale Pile 1 near Seascale, Cumberland, England, faced a terrible choice: allow a raging fire to burn itself out while it released dangerously high levels of ionizing radiation into the surrounding countryside; or, attempt to extinguish the conflagration with water, an option that could cause a hydrogen explosion (again, … Luckily, prevailing wind patterns blew most of the radioactive plume out to sea. Alamogordo (USA)Amchitka (USA)Arlit & Akokan (Niger)Basra (Iraq)Bikini and Enewetak Atolls (Marshall Islands)Black Hills/Paha Sapa (USA)Chazhma Bay (Russia)Chernobyl (Ukraine)Church Rock/Kinłitsosinil (USA)Elliot Lake (Canada)Emu Field (Australia)Ezeiza (Argentina)Fallujah (Iraq)Fangataufa and Moruroa (French Polynesia)Fukushima (Japan)Goiânia (Brazil)Hanford (USA)Hiroshima (Japan)In Ekker (Algeria)Jáchymov (Czech Republic)Jadugoda (India)Kiritimati and Malden (Kiribati)La Hague (France)Lop Nor (China)Mailuu-Suu (Kyrgyzstan) Mayak (Russland) Maralinga (Australia)Mounana (Gabon)Nagasaki (Japan)Nevada Test Site (USA)Novaya Zemlya (Russia)Olympic Dam (Australia)Palomares (Spain)Radium Hill (Australia)Ranger (Australia)Reggane (Algeria)Rössing (Namibia)Saskatchewan (Canada)Sellafield/Windscale (UK)Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan)Sequoyah and Watts Bar (USA) Shiprock/Tsé Bit’ Aí (USA) Spokane Reservation (USA) Têwo/Diébù (China) Three Mile Island (USA) Thule (Greenland) Tokai-mura (Japan) Tomsk-7/Seversk (Russia)Wismut region (Germany) Witwatersrand (South Africa), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/8050008.stm, www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE_1429_web.pdf, www.independent.co.uk/news/soil-tests-condemn-sellafi eld-1177501.html, http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/docs/briefings/a99.pdf, www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards, Bikini and Enewetak Atolls (Marshall Islands), Fangataufa and Moruroa (French Polynesia). Windscale Fire – 1957. But this caused a build up of excess energy in the reactor core which could cause it to overheat if left unchecked. All of the fuel was removed from Pile 2 while only a very small proportion of fuel remains in the fire-damaged parts of Pile 1. The fire left about 10 tons of radioactive fuel melted in the reactor core. But new research claims the incident generated twice as much radioactive material and could have caused more cancers than was previously thought. Windscale Fire - Free download as Powerpoint Presentation (.ppt / .pptx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online. The Windscale Fire seems like it had the potential to become a much more serious incident due to actions taken in trying to get the reactor under control. how did it effect the environment? For example, after the Windscale fire in 1957, the men who risked their lives to prevent that fire spreading were made scapegoats by the Government's inquiry into the cause of the accident. The Windscale fire and the ensuing fallout, are estimated to have caused at least 190 cases of cancer, more than half of which were fatal. The Windscale fire and the ensuing fallout, are estimated to have caused at least 190 cases of cancer, more than half of which were fatal. #History #NuclearNearly 30 years before the disaster in Chernobyl that left Pripyat an abandoned ruin, a fire nearly caused a similar outcome. After years of negotiations for the magic recipe, Britain’s Harold Macmillan had finally succeeded; at the end of October 1957, he was to sign the Declaration of Common Purpose by the President and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, by which the U.S. would share with Britain the secrets of atomic weaponry. IAEA. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In hopes of accelerating the Wigner process, the operators increased the power even more. Even after this, the thermocouples did not record an increase in temperature. Die ehemaligen Alliierten trieben jedoch nationale Nukleartechnologieprogramme voran, so dass Großbritannien ab 1952 über eigene Atomwaffen verfügte, die Sowjetunion ab 1949. In any event, the consensus is that the hot spots combined with the second heating ruptured a cartridge, thereby causing the fire. They had no good options. The Windscale fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, and one of the worst in the world, ranked in severity at level 5 out of a possible 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Don’t forget that, because of the dodgy design of the reactors, ionizing radiation at dangerous levels had been leaking for days. This interaction transformed the graphite’s crystalline structure causing it to build up energy until such a time (usually not a convenient one) when it could suddenly, and dangerously, release it as heat. A serious fire developed in the core of a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works, Sellafield, northwest England, which led to the release of significant quantities of radioactive material into the environment during 10–11th October, 1957. The Windscale fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, ranked in severity at level 5/7-point International Nuclear Event Scale. needs to be understandable! Although not on the scale with Chernobyl, the Windscale release of iodine-131, caesium-137 and xenon-133 are thought to have caused at least 200 cancer cases; it is believed that the numbers would be far higher were it not for the last-minute addition of the filters. In the months after the Windscale Fire, a state of emergency was declared in the 500 km area around the plant. It throws a revealing new light on an important event of fifty years ago and on questions of secrecy and responsibility. I would really appreciate … The water did not cause an explosion but it did little to quell the flames. It presented strong evidence that the Windscale fire of 1957—the first fire in any nuclear facility—was caused by the flagrant abandonment of safety measures. 1984 Nov;46(5). Required fields are marked *. Remembering An Accident The Windscale Fire Taproot Root Cause Ysis. Next, the power was increased to further raise the temperature. To make matters worse, over time, more heat and more cycles were required to release the extra energy, but even then (unknown until after the accident), pockets of Wigner energy remained in the core. 1 in 1957 which caused a release of radioactivity outside the site. It used to produce plutonium for the British nuclear weapons program and now serves as a reprocessing site for nuclear waste. Um den wissenschaftlichen und technische… In 2004 and 2005, 83,000 liters of radioactive acid leaked into the North Sea, containing carcinogens such as strontium-90 and cesium-137. The compound could be a target of a terrorist or a hacker attack, and even a computer virus could potentially trigger a catastrophe. Leave a Comment / Industrial / By devastating. In 1971 Windscale management was transferred from the UKAEA to British Nuclear Fuels and renamed Sellafield. The U.S. Institute for Resource and Security Studies has called Sellafield “one of the world’s most dangerous concentrations of long-lived radioactive materials.” Sellafield is vulnerable to a variety of risks: natural catastrophes could compromise the cooling systems, human error and negligence could cause fires, explosions or other types of accidents. 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