nuclear-news

Filtered chimney at Windscale ( Sellafield)Cockcroft Folly
1957 Windscale Nuclear Accident: “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./ “Radioactive dust did escape, but the filters caught about 95 per cent of it,” says Christopher Cockcroft, Sir John Cockcroft’s son.” “Windscale Piles: Cockcroft’s Follies avoided nuclear disaster” By Duncan Leatherdale, BBC News, 4 November 2014 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990

“Clearly, a high-capacity filter would help protect the public from becoming exposed to radioactive releases if there were venting from either the drywell or wetwell (in cases in which the suppression pool was ineffective at scrubbing and retaining radionuclides)…. a 2005 Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) document on severe accident mitigation alternatives analysis states that the estimated cost of a filtered containment vent would…