14 autres agents subissent une faible irradiation externe qui reste inférieure à celle que délivrent certaines radiographies médicales. Tom Hughes and his colleague had already created a fire break by ejecting some undamaged fuel cartridges from around the blaze, and Tom Tuohy suggested trying to eject some from the heart of the fire by bludgeoning the melted cartridges through the reactor and into the cooling pond behind it with scaffolding poles. [48] The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot; one returned dripping molten metal. During this attempt the temperatures anomalously began falling across the reactor core, except in channel 2053, whose temperature was rising. Windscale fire: Windscale, Seascale, Cumbria (now Sellafield), England: 95–4,000+ 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Penney reported on 26 October 1957, 16 days after the fire was extinguished[80] and reached four conclusions: Those who had been directly involved in the events were heartened by Penney's conclusion that the steps taken had been "prompt and efficient" and had "displayed considerable devotion to duty". A nuclear reactor in the north of England caught fire 60 years ago - in October 1957. Date 10/10/1957. So many cartridges missed the water channel that it became routine for staff to walk through the chimney ductwork with shovels and scoop the cartridges back into the water. Les flammes diminuèrent puis disparurent et le cœur du réacteur montra alors les premiers signes de refroidissement. This was not a fatal problem, and had happened in the past. The Windscale Fire. [11][12], The December 1938 discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann—and its explanation and naming by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch—raised the possibility that an extremely powerful atomic bomb could be created. Whether or not the later cancer cluster in the area is attributable to Windscale is a matter of controversy. 4,056 – Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine, April 26, 1986. Culprit British Government. The original paper has been … [63] The pile is not scheduled for final decommissioning until 2037. "An Assessment of the Radiological Impact of the Windscale Reactor Fire", M.J. Crick, G.S. [87], The following substances were placed inside metal cartridges and subjected to neutron irradiation to create radioisotopes. [8] In the Spring of 1957, only months before the fire, there was a leak of radioactive material in which dangerous strontium-90 isotopes were released into the environment. [64] The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 released 25 times more xenon-135 than Windscale, but much less iodine, caesium and strontium. Sir John Cockcroft, leading the project team, was sufficiently alarmed to order the filters. [6] For comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl explosion released approximately 1,760,000 TBq of iodine-131; 79,500 TBq caesium-137; 6,500,000 TBq xenon-133; 80,000 TBq strontium-90; and 6100 TBq plutonium, along with about a dozen other radionuclides in large amounts. Windscale fire, accident in 1957 at the Windscale nuclear reactor facility and plutonium-production plant in the county of Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), in northwestern England, that was the United Kingdom’s most serious nuclear power accident. The documentary suggests that the fire — the first fire in any nuclear facility — was caused by the relaxation of safety measures, as a result of pressure from the British government to quickly produce fissile materials for nuclear weapons. This time they also took advantage of the smaller fins by building larger interiors in the cartridges, allowing more fuel in each one. The accident resulted in the first scientifically documented example of intervention, based on radiological protection criteria, to protect the public from an accidental release of radioactivity. [4] The fire took place in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale facility on the northwest coast of England in Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria). These were not detected because the thermocouples used to measure the core temperatures were positioned based on the original heat distribution design, and were not measuring the parts of the reactor which became hottest. Date 10/10/1957. The UK government played down the events at the time and reports on the fire were subject to heavy censorship, as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan feared the incident would harm British-American nuclear relations. Tuohy once again hauled himself onto the reactor shielding and ordered the water to be turned on, listening carefully at the inspection holes for any sign of a hydrogen reaction as the pressure was increased. On October 10 1957, uranium fuel at the Windscale plant in Cumbria overheated and caught fire, setting in motion a terrifying series of events. [77] Windscale Pile 2, though undamaged by the fire, was considered too unsafe for continued use. The release of radiation by the Windscale fire was greatly exceeded by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, but the fire has been described as the worst reactor accident until Three Mile Island in 1979. Area is attributable to the radioactive isotope polonium-210 were also released it also feared that Britain might lose great. Fission, essentiellement 740 térabecquerels d'iode 131, rejetés à l'extérieur run tritium! In world affairs Ukraine, April 26, 1986 the health effects of core... 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