[63], Inspections showed that there had not been a graphite fire, and the damage to the graphite was localised, caused by severely overheated uranium fuel assemblies nearby. The Windscale plant consisted of two gas-cooled nuclear reactors. On 10th October 1957, Pile 1 at Windscale in West Cumbria was on fire. Part of the site was later renamed Sellafield after being transferred to BNFL, and the whole site is now owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. L'accident a été jugé de niveau 5 sur l'échelle INES. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can believe how hot it could possibly be.". In place of water, they used air cooling driven by convection through a 400-foot (120-m) tall chimney, which could create enough airflow to cool the reactor under normal operating conditions. There was considerable concern that such a system was subject to catastrophic failure in the event of a loss-of-coolant accident. As a result, consumption of iodine-131 can give an increased chance of later suffering cancer of the thyroid. The event, generally known as the 'Windscale accident' or the 'Windscale pile fire', has been retrospectively rated at 5 on the INES scale . La principale préoccupation à cette époque a été l'iode 131, qui n'a qu'une demi-vie de huit jours, mais est incorporé dans le corps humain et est concentré par la thyroïde. In January 1988, it was released by the Public Record Office. ), Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold. Faced with a lack of other options, the operators decided to go ahead with the plan.[61]. Measures taken to deal with the consequences of the accident were adequate and there had been "no immediate damage to health of any of the public or of the workers at Windscale". More recent academic research carried out in 2007 estimated that 100 to 240 deaths were caused by the radiation leak. [48] The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot; one returned dripping molten metal. L'accident a été jugé de niveau 5 sur l'échelle INES. [8], A 2010 study of workers involved in the cleanup of the accident found no significant long term health effects from their involvement. Lakestay-sellafield Windscale 1957. surrounding Windscale was stopped for 6 weeks. [9][10] Like the later fire, this incident was also covered up by the British government. The scientists who had remained in Britain favoured uranium-235, but those who had been working in America were strongly in favour of plutonium. [3] It was not until 1988 that Penney's report was released in full. Operators were unsure what to do about the fire. The design initially called for the core to be cooled like the B Reactor, which used a constant supply of water that poured through the channels in the graphite. Ils sont modérés au graphite, comme le réacteur américain de Hanford, mais refroidis par air[1],[2]. [3][2], A 2010 study of workers directly involved in the cleanup—and thus expected to have seen the highest exposure rates—found no significant long term health effects from their involvement. On October 10 1957, uranium fuel at the Windscale plant in Cumbria overheated and caught fire, setting in motion a terrifying series of events. The "Penney Report" was submitted to the Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and formed the basis of the Government White Paper submitted to Parliament in November 1957. A fuel channel inspection plug was taken out close to a thermocouple registering high temperatures and it was then that the operators saw that the fuel was red hot. [63], A board of inquiry met under the chairmanship of Sir William Penney from 17 to 25 October 1957. Une première tentative se solda par un échec, le flux d'air empêchant l'eau d'entrer en contact suffisamment avec les flammes. [22] The British government saw this as a resurgence of United States isolationism akin to that which had occurred after the First World War. The marine environment of the Irish Sea also suffered from the disaster, as well as from countless other spills, leaks, incidents and the deliberate or accidental discharge of radioactive effluent. Foreman, Reactor accident chemistry an update, Cogent Chemistry, 2018, volume 4, 1450944, Details of the levels and nature of the radioactivity remaining in the core can be seen at, British contribution to the Manhattan Project, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "The unacceptable toll of Britain's nuclear disaster", "Windscale fire: 'We were too busy to panic, "Info withheld on nuclear accident, papers show", "Windscale Piles: Cockcroft's Follies avoided nuclear disaster", "BBC documentary reveals government reckless in drive for nuclear weapons", "INERT ANNEALING OF IRRADIATED GRAPHITE BY INDUCTIVE HEATING", https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23312009.2018.1450944, "Windscale Manager who doused the flames of 1957 fire - Obituary in The Independent 2008-03-26", "Meeting of RG2 with Windscale Pile 1 Decommissioning Project Team", "Britain Suppressed Details of '57 Atomic Disaster", "The view from outside Windscale in 1957", "Safety and Dose Management During Decommissioning of a Fire Damaged Nuclear Reactor", "Proceedings into the fire at Windscale Pile Number One (1989 revised transcript of the "Penney Report")", "BBC documentary reveals government reckless in drive for the production of nuclear weapons", "Report on the accident at Windscale No. This required huge quantities of tritium, five times as much, and it had to be produced as rapidly as possible as the test deadlines approached. [48] Tuohy climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. In 1968 a paper was published in the journal Nature, on a study of radioisotopes found in oysters from the Irish Sea, using gamma spectroscopy. This, he reported, was due to the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.[48]. No air-cooled reactors have been built since. Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy[59] donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled the 80-foot (24-m) ladder to the top of the reactor building, where he stood atop the reactor lid to examine the rear of the reactor, the discharge face. Far higher death toll estimates have been made, but are disputed. Il n'y eut aucune évacuation dans les environs, mais les autorités sanitaires se sont préoccupées de ce que le lait ait pu être contaminé à des niveaux le rendant impropre à la consommation. The reactor tank itself has remained sealed since the accident and still contains about 15 tons of uranium fuel. More recent academic research carried out in 2007 estimated that 100 to 240 deaths were caused by the radiation leak. La température élevée commençait à fragiliser l'enveloppe du réacteur qui menaçait de s'effondrer. This was risky, as molten metal oxidises in contact with water, stripping oxygen from the water molecules and leaving free hydrogen, which could mix with incoming air and explode, tearing open the weakened containment. The primary cause of the accident had been the second nuclear heating on 8 October, applied too soon and too rapidly. International Nuclear Event Scale 5 - Accident with wider consequences . In October 1957 Britain spread a plume of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere from a nuclear reactor fire at Sellafield. [67] Milk from about 500 km2 of nearby countryside was destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month. 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. At Hanford, this possibility was dealt with by constructing a 30-mile (48-km) escape road to evacuate the staff were this to occur, abandoning the site. A fire in a nuclear reactor at Windscale Works (Sellafield, England) in October 1957 led to an uncontrolled aerial release of radionuclides. In October, 1993, 36 years after the Windscale fire, two leukaemia victims lost their four-year battle for damages from the nuclear authorities. [15] The August 1943 Quebec Agreement merged Tube Alloys with the American Manhattan Project. De fait, une étude menée en 2010 auprès des travailleurs directement impliqués dans le nettoyage - et formant la population la plus exposée - n'identifia aucune conséquence significative à long terme sur leur santé[10],[11]. [18], After the war ended, the Special Relationship between Britain and the United States "became very much less special". [14] In response, the British government initiated an atomic bomb project, codenamed Tube Alloys. Wigner energy gathered because of the displacement of … [54] Concluding that 2053 was releasing energy but none of the others were, on the morning of 8 October the decision was made to try a second Wigner release. The two graphite-moderated reactors, referred to at the time as "piles", had been built as part of the British post-war atomic bomb project. They could not be installed at the base as construction of the chimneys had already begun, and were constructed on the ground then winched into position at the top once the chimney's concrete had set. [49] This improvised process was carried out regularly at Windscale, but over the years it had become increasingly difficult to force the stored energy out. 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. These changes triggered further warnings from the technical staff, which were again brushed aside. En comparaison, la limite annuelle d'incorporation de l'iode 131 à ne pas dépasser pour le personnel du nucléaire correspond à une dose de 0,05 sievert à la thyroïde. Faced with this crisis, Tuohy suggested using water. [48] The British design, thus, had a fatal flaw. An Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was established at RAF Harwell, south of Oxford, under the directorship of John Cockcroft. The documentary features interviews with key scientists and plant operators, such as Tom Tuohy. Windscale fire: Windscale, Seascale, Cumbria (now Sellafield), England: 95–4,000+ 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Death toll: There were no casualties at the time. Le site est conçu peu après la guerre par l'Établissement de recherche atomique d'Harwell sous la direction du Baron William Penney (en). He returned to the reactor upper containment several times throughout the incident, at the height of which a fierce conflagration was raging from the discharge face and playing on the back of the reinforced concrete containment — concrete whose specifications required that it be kept below a certain temperature to prevent its collapse.[60]. The Windscale Fire. Les investigations menées lors des opérations de déclassement préliminaires à la démolition du réacteur montrèrent cependant que ces craintes n'étaient pas fondées. After a first successful production run of tritium in Pile 1, the heat problem was presumed to be negligible and full-scale production began. Estimates of the cost of nuclear reactors varied, but it was reckoned that a uranium enrichment plant would cost ten times as much to produce the same number of atomic bombs as a reactor. During one of the inspections, he found that the inspection plates—which were removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core—were stuck fast. [41] Raising the issue at a meeting he suggested filters be added to the chimneys but his concerns were dismissed as too difficult to deal with and not even recorded in the minutes. The core of the reactors consisted of a large block of graphite with horizontal channels drilled through it for the fuel cartridges. coast there had been a fire in a nuclear reactor fortunately there were no deaths and no known injuries most people soon forgot the kames tragedy but the windscale accident captured the headlines preoccupied ministers and engaged senior officials scientists and engineers for months it is still a contemporary issue and is vividly remembered a compra windscale 1957 anatomy of … They estimated that a uranium-235 bomb would require ten times the fissile material as one using plutonium to produce half the TNT equivalent. The Americans had long warned about this problem, and had even warned that such a discharge could lead to a fire in the reactor. In October 1957 Britain spread a plume of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere from a nuclear reactor fire at Sellafield. Operators tried to examine the pile with a remote scanner but it had jammed. Both the target material and some of the product isotopes are listed below. Néanmoins, l'élévation de température anormale n'était pas due à une décharge d'énergie mais à une cartouche qui s'était enflammée après s'être brisée. "An Assessment of the Radiological Impact of the Windscale Reactor Fire", M.J. Crick, G.S. [67] It alleged that the clusters of leukaemia in children around Windscale were attributable to the radioactive fallout from the fire. [1] The accident ranked a high level of 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. International Nuclear Event Scale 5 - Accident with wider consequences . Site Windscale Pile 2. The National Radiological Board estimated that about 30 additional cancer deaths may have resulted in the general public, representing 0.0015 percent increase in the cancer deaths rate: 0 0 0 0 30 0.0015 100 C C C C C C ' (1) where: C 0 is the population cancer deaths from all other causes. It was most unlikely that any harmful effects would develop. October 10, 1957 - A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. [42] They became known as "Cockcroft's Folly" as many regarded the delay they caused and their great expense to be a needless waste. Having helped the US Manhattan Project develop the atom bomb at the end of the Second World War, the British government felt it had to develop its own A … Date 10/10/1957. New Scientist vol 99 29 September 1983 p. 911, Accident at Windscale: World's First Atomic Alarm, 'Accident at Windscale' British Medical Journal 16 Nov 1957;2 (5054) pp 1166-8, "1957: Inquiry publishes cause of nuclear fire", "Evaluation of graphite safety issues for the British production piles at Windscale", "Radio Plays - Energy Industry:WINDSCALE....2007", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windscale_fire&oldid=997866160, Environmental disasters in the United Kingdom, Nuclear weapons infrastructure of the United Kingdom, Articles needing additional references from October 2019, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, A maximum of 140 of the estimated 240 additional cases of. 56 direct deaths and 4,000 extra cancer deaths. It was shut down shortly afterwards. [31] He established his headquarters in a former Royal Ordnance Factory at Risley in Lancashire on 4 February 1946. Cause Fire . NRPB Reports, Oct. 1957, Nov. 1982. Articles (2) Read Up: Great Articles On Windscale Fire … Date 10/10/1957. [1][2][3] At the time of the incident no one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but milk from about 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi) of nearby countryside was diluted and destroyed for about a month due to concerns about its exposure to radiation. Temperatures were becoming extreme (one thermocouple registered 1,300 °C) and the biological shield around the stricken reactor was now in severe danger of collapse. However, unknown to the operators, the cartridge had not just burst, but caught fire, and this was the source of the anomalous heating in channel 2053, not a Wigner release. [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. [24] The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, set up a cabinet sub-committee, the Gen 75 Committee (known informally as the "Atomic Bomb Committee"),[25] on 10 August 1945 to examine the feasibility of a renewed nuclear weapons programme. The Windscale Fire. [48] He reported a dull red luminescence visible, lighting up the void between the back of the reactor and the rear containment. 4,056 – Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine, April 26, 1986. The event, generally known as the 'Windscale accident' or the 'Windscale pile fire', has been retrospectively rated at 5 on the INES scale . Parmi le personnel de l'installation, 96 personnes présentent, malgré le port d'un masque, des doses à la thyroïde allant jusqu'à 0,1 sievert. [72] An updated 1988 UK government report (the most recent government estimate) estimated that 100 fatalities "probably" resulted from cancers as a result of the releases over 40 to 50 years. Iodine taken up by the human body is preferentially incorporated in the thyroid. [3], The event was not an isolated incident; there had been a series of radioactive discharges from the piles in the years leading up to the accident. Outre le manque d'expérience sur l'effet Wigner des scientifiques et ingénieurs chargés du réacteur numéro 1, celui-ci était utilisé au moment de l'accident dans une configuration différente de celle pour laquelle il avait été conçu initialement (les cartouches avaient été chargées avec un mélange d'uranium et de lithium, afin de produire du tritium, alors que le réacteur était conçu à l'origine uniquement pour traiter de l'uranium). 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. Workers were followed up for 50 years to 2007, extending the follow-up of a previously published cohort study on the Windscale fire by 10 years. [86], In 2007, the BBC produced another documentary about the accident entitled "Windscale: Britain’s Biggest Nuclear Disaster",[78] which investigates the history of the first British nuclear facility and its role in the development of nuclear weapons. Ces estimations sont cependant fondées sur la modélisation linéaire sans seuil, utilisée en radioprotection individuelle, mais dont l'application à l'exposition de populations à de faibles doses d'irradiation est considérée comme non légitime par les autorités de protection radiologique[9]. [3] It all started with a routine annealing process that was carried out to regulate the levels of Wigner energy stored in the graphite moderators. By doing so, he was risking his life by exposing himself to a large amount of radiation. [1] The accident ranked a high level of 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. [23] It also feared that Britain might lose its great power status, and therefore its influence in world affairs. Sir John Cockcroft, leading the project team, was sufficiently alarmed to order the filters. In an effort to cool the pile, the cooling fans were sped up and airflow was increased. Windscale Fire – 1957. Cause Fire. A nuclear reactor in the north of England caught fire 60 years ago - in October 1957. [69] Partly because of this censorship, consensus on the extent of the long-term health impacts caused by the radiation leak has changed over time as more information on the incident has come to light. The accident at Windscale was also contemporary to the Kyshtym disaster, a far more serious accident, which occurred on 29 September 1957 at the Mayak plant in the Soviet Union, when the failure of the cooling system for a tank storing tens of thousands of tons of dissolved nuclear waste resulted in a non-nuclear explosion. Motive Accidental. Il fut décidé de maintenir le flux d'eau dans le réacteur pendant 24 heures, pour garantir son refroidissement complet. 1 was operational in October 1950 followed by Pile No. [45] In spite of these precautions and the stack filters, scientist Frank Leslie discovered radioactivity around the site and the village, but this information was kept secret, even from the staff at the station. Windscale a ensuite été rebaptisé en Sellafield. As this process continued, the temperature continued to rise and eventually reached 400 °C. This attempt caused the temperature of the entire reactor to rise, indicating a successful release. RADIOACTIVE RELEASE. Epidemiological estimates put the number of additional cancers caused by the Three Mile Island accident at not more than one; only Chernobyl produced immediate casualties.[82]. 200 – Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion, (Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union, 29 September 1957), 270,000 people were exposed to dangerous radiation levels. This page was last edited on 2 January 2021, at 16:47. Whether or not the later cancer cluster in the area is attributable to Windscale is a matter of controversy. In 1983, Yorkshire Television released a documentary focusing on the health effects of the fire, entitled Windscale - the Nuclear Laundry. [19] The British government had trusted that America would continue to share nuclear technology, which it considered a joint discovery,[20] but little information was exchanged immediately after the war,[21] and the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) officially ended technical cooperation. This accident happened on one of the reactors (referred as atomic «piles» at that time) supplying in plutonium the United Kingdom arsenal of atomic bombs. This was not a fatal problem, and had happened in the past. "I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in an interview. Disaster Amount 10 tons of melted radioactive fuel . They were known as Windscale Pile 1 and Pile 2, housed in large concrete buildings a few hundred feet apart. During this attempt the temperatures anomalously began falling across the reactor core, except in channel 2053, whose temperature was rising. [48] The new gas-cooled Calder Hall reactors on the site had just received a delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide and this was rigged up to the charge face of Windscale Pile 1, but there were problems getting it to the fire in useful quantities. Le réacteur atteignant 400 °C, il fut décidé d'augmenter son refroidissement en accélérant les ventilateurs. This would cause the reactor to run out of control in seconds, potentially exploding. The final removal of fuel from the damaged reactor was scheduled to begin in 2008 and to continue for a further four years. Approximately 6,700 fire-damaged fuel elements and 1,700 fire-damaged isotope cartridges remain in the pile. The decision was therefore taken in favour of plutonium.[37]. Rods were pushed in the front of the core, the "charge face", with new rods being added at a calculated rate. "It [the exposed fuel channel] was white hot," said Hughes' colleague on the charge hoist with him, "it was just white hot. [64] The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 released 25 times more xenon-135 than Windscale, but much less iodine, caesium and strontium. The Windscale fire was retrospectively graded as level 5, an accident with wider consequences, on the International Nuclear Event Scale.[4]. Winston Churchill publicly committed the UK to building a hydrogen bomb, and gave the scientists a tight schedule in which to do so. The reactors at Three Mile Island, unlike those at Windscale and Chernobyl, were in buildings designed to contain radioactive materials released by a reactor accident. 2 in June 1951. [46][47], Once commissioned and settled into operations, Pile 2 experienced a mysterious rise in core temperature. [38] The chain reaction in the core converted the uranium into a variety of isotopes, including some plutonium, which was separated from the other materials using chemical processing. It subsequently was released on DVD. In 2004 and 2005, 83,000 liters of radioactive acid … Site Windscale Pile 2. En 2007, ce chiffre a été réévalué à 240 cas[8]. 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