nuclear-news

Britain’s Windscale nuclear disaster was bad, but could have been much worse

Windscale Piles: Cockcroft’s Follies avoided nuclear disaster By Duncan LeatherdaleBBC News 4 Nov 14  They were labelled a waste of time and money, but in 1957 the bulging tips of two exhaust shafts rising above Sellafield arguably saved much of northern England from becoming a nuclear wasteland. The towers of Windscale Piles have been a landmark for decades but soon the last of these Cold War relics will be gone.

Cumbria’s skyline will change with the removal of the towers – known as Cockcroft’s Follies – but had they not been in place 57 years ago, the entire landscape may have been drastically different.

Until Chernobyl exploded in 1986, the blaze that ravaged the uranium-fuelled reactor at Windscale Pile One in October 1957 was Europe’s most terrible nuclear disaster. It is still the UK’s worst atomic incident.

Without the filters – installed at the last minute by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir John Cockcroft – the effects of the radioactive dust blasted into the Cumbrian air would have been much more devastating……….

On October 10, 1957, a fire was discovered in reactor one. Uranium fuel cells had ignited with the blaze reaching 1,300 C (2,380 F) and workers battled to stop the whole facility exploding.

Men wearing radiation suits used scaffolding pipes to try and push the burning fuel rods out of the graphite reactor.

The high radiation levels meant they could only spend a few hours at the reactor, more volunteers were sought from a nearby cinema.

Water failed to put out the blaze and the fire was only extinguished when operators closed off the air in the reactor room.

The blaze burnt for three days and significant amounts of radioactive material, most notably iodine-131, were released and spread across the UK and Europe.

It is estimated about 240 cases of thyroid cancer were caused by the radioactive leak and all milk produced within 310 square miles (800 square km) of the site was destroyed for a month after the fire.

The level of radioactive material which did escape is estimated to be 1,000 times less than at Chernobyl……….

he decision of health chiefs to order the destruction of milk contaminated by radioactive iodine, which has been linked to thyroid cancer, also prevented these cancers.

“They did some quick calculations and ordered the milk produced in a certain area be destroyed,” he said.

“It would have been a courageous decision but, ultimately, proved to be right, as it stopped a lot of children consuming the radioactive iodine.”

After the fire the chimneys were sealed off. Indeed, 15 tonnes of uranium fuel remains inside still………

Cockcroft’s Follies prevented a catastrophe, but the 1957 fire was nevertheless a dark hour for nuclear in the UK……..http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990

November 6, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, history, UK