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Topic: Windscale fire

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	Sellafield - United Kingdom Nuclear Forces
		The main radionuclide of concern in the releases from the fire was iodine-131.
		Along with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the Windscale fire achieved notoriety as one of the three nuclear disasters which opponents of nuclear power cite as evidence that nuclear power is too risky.
		While the Windscale fire was a serious nuclear accident, the reactor was not large by modern standards, and the radionuclide releases at Chernobyl were 1,000 times higher.
	www.globalsecurity.org /wmd/world/uk/sellafield.htm (1838 words)

	Crisis looms on Windscale clean-up: ThePost.ie
		The material is contained in the Windscale Pile 1, a giant nuclear reactor built in the late 1940s to produce weapons-grade plutonium for Britain's first atomic bomb.
		The age of the structure, built in the late 1940s, and the high temperatures reached in the fire, will have severely damaged the concrete and steel girders inside the core, some of which are likely to be corroding, he said.
		Forty-four years after it went on fire, the core of Windscale's Pile 1 reactor is in much the same state as it was after the fire.
	archives.tcm.ie /businesspost/2001/12/23/story823639728.asp (2583 words)

	Windscale fire - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist
		The fire started at 4.30 in the afternoon; it proved so difficult to control that the following day hoses began to play water down the fuel channels in a desperate attempt to bring the temperature under control.
		For the first time the filters in the Windscale chimneys have proved inadequate to stop the escape of fission products into the countryside, and if the wind had not been blowing out to sea, the extent of contamination might have been more serious than the comparatively light traces which have been found.
		Nobody was killed directly by the Windscale fire, but the release of 700 terabequerels of radioactivity led to it being ranked the world's worst nuclear disaster until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
	www.newscientist.com /article/mg19225780.014-windscale-fire.html (616 words)

	Guardian \| Dismantling of nuclear pile halted
		Fears that the Windscale Pile No 1 at Sellafield in Cumbria, which is packed with melted nuclear fuel, may spontaneously catch fire has led to the suspension of a £60m programme to dismantle it.
		The Windscale fire began on October 8 1957 and burned until October 11, when water at the rate of 200 gallons a minute was poured into the pile.
		As a result of fallout, millions of gallons of milk laced with radioactive iodine were poured down the drains for months afterwards - but the true nature of the disaster was kept from the public.
	www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,,4334676-103690,00.html (603 words)

	Guardian Unlimited \| Archive Search
		In 1957 it caught fire, melting hundreds of rods and producing the world's worst nuclear accident prior to Chernobyl in 1986.
		The UK atomic energy authority, which had awarded the £60m contract, admitted it was a "set-back and a disappointment" that the dismantling could not go ahead.
		Thirty years later the national radiological protection board estimated that, as well as those injured fighting the fire, 100 people would probably have died or would die of cancer as a result.
	www.guardian.co.uk /Archive/Article/0,4273,4334676,00.html (603 words)

	Windscale fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		On October 10, 1957, the graphite core of a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, caught fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area.
		The event, known as the Windscale fire, was considered the world's worst nuclear accident until Three Mile Island in 1979.
		Once commissioned and settled into operations, Windscale Pile 2 experienced a mysterious rise in core temperature and this was attributed to a sudden Wigner energy release.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Windscale_fire (2658 words)

	Systematic Failure
		Windscale Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor Decommissioning Project - the WAGR is a carbon-dioxide cooled prototype that ceased operating in 1981.
		Unit 2 was closed after a fire in the turbine building in 1991, Unit 1 was closed in 1996.
		A fire and explosion in a ship containing 2300 tones of fertiliser killed 576 people in Texas City - nearly 4% of it's population at that time.
	www.object-craft.com.au /~andrewm/links/systemfail.html (1058 words)

	Sellafield Summary
		The Windscale nuclear reactor was built in the 1940s near Sellafield, a remote farm area of northern England, to supply nuclear power to the region.
		Windscale was also the site of the prototype British Advanced gas-cooled reactor.
		The Windscale Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (WAGR) (http://www.ukaea.org.uk/wagr/history.htm) was a prototype for the UK's second generation of reactors, the Advanced gas-cooled reactor or AGR, which followed on from the Magnox stations.
	www.bookrags.com /Sellafield (3516 words)

	Coolers 'fanned the flames' of Windscale fire
		Recent efforts to clear the fire debris have suggested that switching off the reactor's fans probably did more to contain the fire than smothering it with gas or swamping it with the five million litres of water, traditionally thought to have contained the blaze.
		The fire was thought to have been caused by a failure to control "Wigner energy" - that is, energy that built up in the cylindrical graphite core of the reactor.
		As a result of the fire, some 15 tons of melted and partly-burned fuel, of the original complement of 180 tons, lay in the centre of the No 1 reactor pile.
	telegraph.co.uk /htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1996/10/11/nwin11.html (745 words)

	Windscale Nuclear Incident
		After several hours of trying different methods to extinguish the fire, the reactor core was flooded with water.
		This was the fire indication of a fire that had been smoldering for about 2 days.
		The Medical Research Council Committee concluded "that it is in the highest degree unlikely that any harm has been done to the health of anybody, whether a worker in the Windscale plant or a member of the general public." Except for the restrictions on milk usage, no other environmental action was required.
	www.nucleartourist.com /events/windscal.htm (1058 words)

	Lakestay-The 1957 Windscale reactor fire
		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 bomb to be able to stay “at the Top Table” as a world power.
		Then they tried to pump in carbon dioxide gas to try and smother the flames, but the heat was such that oxygen was produced from the gas and thus fed the flames higher.
		Despite reassurances given to the public at the time the official National Radiological Protection Board estimated in a 1987 study that at least 33 people are likely to die prematurly from cancers as a result of the accident.
	www.lakestay.co.uk /1957.htm (945 words)

	Government records destroyed in cover-up
		The 1957 reactor fire at Windscale was possibly the most serious nuclear accident to occur outside the Soviet Union.
		The fire began at midnight on 9th October and was finally brought under control on the 12th.
		Office's Windscale station volume and replaced with new sheets of a slightly different colour from the sheets for previous and subsequent years.
	www.llrc.org /rat/subrat/windscale.htm (682 words)

	Windscale Works
		An ashpan and dampers were made at Windscale and instead of a side bunker on the footplate for coal, which is the usual place for it in this type of engine, a small bunker was attached to the rear of the cab.
		Needless to say this information (which had to be put on somewhere) was recorded on a small plate attached to the rear of the bunker and the number ‘1’ was painted on the cab sides and also on the front buffer beam with the addition of ‘No.’.
		Some fairly extensive repairs, however, have been carried out by the Windscale staff such as boiler retubing and of course the conversion already referred to, and in one instance necessitated by the accidental destruction by fire of the original wood lagging, the re-lagging of a boiler.
	www.irsociety.co.uk /Archives/17/Windscale.htm (1330 words)

	Press Release from the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland
		It investigated a suspected link between a serious fire in a nuclear reactor at Sellafield (then called Windscale) in 1957, and births of Down's syndrome babies to six mothers who had been pupils in a school in Dundalk in 1956-'57.
		On the assumption that all six mothers were at the Dundalk school at the time of the 1957 fire, the suggestion had been made that radioactive contamination from the fire might have been a factor in causing Down's syndrome in their children.
		The RPII accepts, in the light of this finding, that the suggestion of a link between the Down's syndrome births and the Windscale fire is unfounded.
	www.rpii.ie /press/pr200103.html (514 words)

	WINDSCALE FIRE - NRPB INFORMATION SHEET (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Windscale fire occurred in a graphite moderated, air cooled, military reactor used to produce plutonium for Britain's nuclear weapons programme.
		The main radionuclide of concern in the releases from the fire was iodine-131 which concentrates in the thyroid gland.
		The Windscale fire was a serious nuclear accident leading to a significant release of radionuclides into the atmosphere.
	karws.gso.uri.edu /Marsh/Newsgroups/Wscal-is.htm (821 words)

	BNES YGN: Events » Rough Guide 2004
		The lecture was particularly interesting due to the stark admission of previous failing to develop long-term subterranean storage facilities within the UK due to the failure to consult with the public at an early stage in project development.
		Initially, an introduction was given to the Windscale Pile 1 fire of 1957 and the impact of this event on the industry.
		Nearly fifty years on from the disaster the badly damaged uranium and isotopes which were in the pile at the time of the fire remain within the graphite moderator.
	www.bnes.com /ygn/events/roughguide/rg04.html (974 words)

	BBC NEWS \| England \| Cumbria \| Successful year for Windscale removal
		Windscale is situated on the Sellafield site, Cumbria, although it has its own site license.
		Both Windscale Piles were shut down in 1957 following the Windscale fire and Pile I is now being decommissioned.
		The Windscale AGR was shut down in 1981 and is now the UK's demonstration project for complete decommissioning of a power-generating reactor.
	news.bbc.co.uk /1/hi/england/cumbria/3173093.stm (241 words)

	Sellafield - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The piles were shut down following a fire in Pile 1 on 10 October, 1957 which destroyed the core and released an estimated 750 terabecquerels (TBq) (20,000 curies) of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131, which is taken up in the body by the thyroid.
		Following the fire Pile 1 was unservicable, and Pile 2, although undamaged by the fire, was shut down as a precaution.
		1983 was also the year in which Yorkshire Television produced a documentary "Windscale: The Nuclear Laundry", which claimed that the low levels of radioactivity that are associated with waste streams from nuclear plants such as Sellafield did pose a non-negligible risk.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Windscale (3638 words)

	IEER Reports: Nuclear Power Deception
		Further, a graphite fire in an MHTGR could be far more damaging than the Windscale fire, because the fission products in the MHTGR are contained in the tiny graphite fuel elements that would be on fire.
		In contrast, the fuel elements and graphite moderator in the Windscale reactor were separate entities, though both were of course part of the reactor core.
		Fire extinguishing system vulnerability: The NRC has suggested that a water-based fire extinguishing system like that at Fort St. Vrain may be acceptable for the MHTGR as well.
	www.ieer.org /reports/npd7.html (8973 words)

	TIME.com: Fire in the Uranium -- Oct. 28, 1957 -- Page 1 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		Late in the afternoon, scientists at Britain's Windscale plant, the main British source of plutonium, saw danger signals on a temperature control instrument.
		The crisis at Windscale was over, but alarm spread across Britain and refused to be checked by soothing statements from the Atomic Energy Authority.
		Air that has passed through the Windscale reactors is blown up a 416-ft. chimney that is capped by filters to keep radioactive dust from escaping into the atmosphere.
	www.time.com /time/magazine/article/0,9171,810078,00.html (739 words)

	Nuclear Engineering International (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Windscale Piles production reactors on the west Cumbrian coast were fully operational by the time UKAEA was formed.
		However, in October 1957 the Windscale fire brought the euphoria of the first age of nuclear energy to an abrupt end.
		The Magnox family of reactors was still under construction and the prototype advanced gas-cooled reactor at Windscale came into full power in 1963 heralding the beginning of the second nuclear age.
	www.neimagazine.com /story.asp?sc=2025277 (1975 words)

	Nuala Ahern MEP
		Some radioactive smoke from the fire was released from the chimney and dispersed over England, Wales, Ireland and Northern Europe.
		In 1977, the first health reports on the possible health impact of the 1957 Windscale fire and on the health impact of the Sellafield discharges to the sea began.
		The Yorkshire TV documentary ‘Windscale - The Nuclear Laundry’, highlighted the high incidence of childhood leukaemia in Seascale and the surrounding area.
	www.nualaahern.com /sellafield.htm (2477 words)

	L. Fletcher Prouty Mangles Details of Nuclear Accident
		The Windscale plant had been operational since 1950, supplying weapons grade plutonium for the first British atomic test in 1952.
		It was the fire which caused the release of the radioisotopes, not a criticality accident.
		As for Windscale being covered over: the plant in fact is still in operation, and the reactor where the accident occured is still standing!
	mcadams.posc.mu.edu /windscal.htm (760 words)

	Windscale fire - nuclear - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist Tech
		Windscale fire - nuclear - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist Tech
		The reactor at Windscale is one of the oldest in the world, first put on paper nine or ten years ago when scientists knew a great deal less about fission than they do now.
		The military reactor involved, known as Pile 1, was never repaired, and neighbouring Pile 2 was closed down as a precaution.
	www.newscientisttech.com /channel/tech/nuclear/mg19225780.014-windscale-fire.html (611 words)

	01.13.letters.html
		In 1983, a local Yorkshire Television documentary: Windscale the Nuclear Laundry drew attention to a shocking rate of leukemia cases and deaths in children living near the plant.
		In the area around Windscale, the incidence in children under 10 was reported to be 10 times the national average.
		If the Windscale fire had polluted with rapid deaths, and damaged the food animals that hit the pocket, perhaps a lot of little human lives may have been saved by evacuation -- by import of clean food and milk to the area, and the surrounding areas of Windscale cordoned off for 60,000 years...
	www.populist.com /01.13.letters.html (2502 words)

	Radiological Emergencies
		The energy generated led to a series of explosions that destroyed the outer containment, exposing the core to the environment and injecting highly radioactive debris into the atmosphere.
		In October 1957, a military air-cooled graphite-moderated natural uranium reactor at Windscale (UK), used for the production of plutonium, overheated and suffered a graphite fire which resulted in the release to the atmosphere of significant amounts of radioactivity.
		To date, there is no evidence that the Windscale Fire of 1957 has had a significant radiological impact on the Irish population.
	www.rpii.ie /radiation/Radiological.aspx (793 words)

	Shipwrecks, Chocolate and Save the Paramount Theatre in Geordie E-zine76 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		On the 10 October 1957, a fire at the Windscale plant resulted in two serious releases of radioactivity.
		Shortly after the Windscale "accident" confectionery manufacturer Rowntree discovered that a large quantity of "chocolate crumb" had been made using milk contaminated with radioactive iodine released by the fire at Windscale.
		The scale of the Windscale incident was not officially acknowledged until 1986, the year Chernobyl took over the dubious accolade of the world's worst nuclear accident.
	www.mg002b3988.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk /ezine76.htm (2479 words)

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