"On the 10th of October, 1957, a fire broke out at the Windscale nuclear facility on the west coast of England..."
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the 10th of October, 1957, a fire broke out at the Windscale Nuclear Facility on the
00:18west coast of England. The flames sent vast quantities of radioactive material billowing
00:24up into the atmosphere. It was, and remains, the United Kingdom's most serious nuclear accident,
00:33but at the time no residents from the surrounding area were evacuated, and most of the details of
00:39the fire were swiftly hushed up. It would be years before the true extent of the damage
00:45caused by the Windscale fire was revealed. Windscale was constructed on the site of a
00:53former munitions factory in 1947. Rather than explosives, though, this new facility would be
01:00producing something much more dangerous... nuclear material for use in bombs as part of the still
01:07relatively new British nuclear weapons program. Although Britain had worked with America to
01:13produce the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, once the Second World War was over
01:19America became reluctant to share its nuclear secrets, leaving British politicians stung.
01:26As they saw it, Britain desperately needed to develop nuclear weapons both as a deterrent
01:31to attack from other countries and in order to stay on an even footing with America.
01:37Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin advised the Prime Minister that they simply had to have nuclear
01:43bombs, whatever it cost. And so Windscale was built, a plant designed to produce enough
01:51plutonium and tritium to make Britain a nuclear power. This production process would take place
01:58primarily within two structures which were known as piles. Each pile consisted of a 2,000 ton,
02:06or two million kilogram, graphite core riddled with channels into which uranium fuel rods were
02:13inserted. Inside the core the fuel rods would react with one another, producing small amounts
02:19of plutonium and huge amounts of heat. As more rods were inserted rods already in the core would
02:27be pushed through to the other side, eventually dropping out the far end and falling into a
02:32channel of water to cool off. There was one major issue, though. Quite often the fuel rods would
02:40simply miss the channel on the other side, landing with a bump on the floor instead. This was such a
02:46common occurrence that staff routinely had to suit up, approach the cooling channel, and manually
02:52push the fuel rods back into the water with shovels. This state of affairs was, suffice to say,
03:00not ideal, but any safety concerns that workers had were swept aside. Management at Windscale
03:08was under enormous pressure from the government to deliver the materials for Britain's nuclear
03:13arsenal. Safety in this climate took a back seat to rapid progress. On the 7th of October,
03:221957, the reactor within Pile 1 began to register greater levels of heat than was normal.
03:30Operators attempted to dispel this heat through something known as a Wigner release,
03:36essentially heating up the whole core and then letting it cool down to dispel stored energy in
03:42a controlled manner rather than in an uncontrolled burst. This procedure had been used eight times in
03:49the history of Windscale's existence, and had been successful every time. This time, however,
03:55the Wigner release didn't have the desired effect. Temperatures in most of the reactor
04:01began to fall, except for in one particular channel, 2053, where the temperature was rising
04:09out of control. On the 8th of October the operators tried the release again. It seemed to work as
04:16expected at first... a relief for the operators, but a relief that wouldn't last for long.
04:24By the morning of the 10th of October the temperature in the reactor was rising once
04:28again. It was very clear that something was wrong. Operators tried to use cooling fans to
04:35bring the temperature down, but instead heat just kept accumulating. At the same time sensors in the
04:43chimney above detected radiation, and workers sighted smoke escaping from the chimney.
04:49Suddenly the truth became evident. One or more cartridges had broken open and were on fire
04:56within the reactor. This changed everything. The fans, rather than cooling the graphite core,
05:04were making the problem worse by fanning the flames. Workers began to troubleshoot with
05:10whatever materials they had available. First they grabbed scaffolding poles and attempted to use
05:16them to push the burning cartridges out of the reactor. This didn't work. The cartridges were
05:22firmly lodged and the heat so intense that the ends of some poles melted. Workers then tried to
05:30smother the flames with carbon dioxide, but couldn't direct enough of it onto the fire.
05:37Water hoses were hooked up to the reactor, a calculated risk since introducing water
05:42would generate hydrogen and might lead to an explosion... but one which they took nonetheless.
05:48But again it just didn't work. The temperature within the core was by now well over 1,000
05:54degrees centigrade, or over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Water wouldn't cut it. In the end
06:02workers shut off the supply of oxygen to the fire in an attempt to smother it. Again, this was a
06:08risky move as it required shutting off the cooling fans. These were the only things which made the
06:15temperature within the reactor tolerable for firefighters. But it appeared to work. The fire
06:21shrunk and eventually died. For days afterwards workers continued to dampen it with water, just
06:28to be safe. A report on the incident was quickly compiled, but the Prime Minister at the time,
06:35Harold Macmillan, ordered it to be censored. The bare facts of the matter would make the public
06:41lose confidence in nuclear power and spoil any hope of a nuclear partnership with America.
06:47The incident was hushed up. Any long-standing safety issues at Windscale were swept under the
06:53rug, and the fire was blamed on an error of judgment by the operators of the pile.
06:59It was insisted that most of the radioactive material had blown harmlessly out to sea.
07:06Nobody was evacuated from the area surrounding Windscale, and the only really dramatic
07:11precaution taken was the disposal of hundreds of tons of milk which had been produced in the area.
07:18The true extent of the damage would not become public knowledge for many years.
07:23We know now that a significant quantity of dangerous radioactive material was released
07:28into the atmosphere by the fire, including 740 Tbq of iodine-131. Iodine-131 was of particular
07:39concern because, despite a very short half-life, it can be absorbed and stored in the thyroid,
07:45causing an increased risk of cancer. While the Board of Inquiry, which met just two weeks after
07:52the fire was extinguished, insisted that the fire had caused no danger to the public, subsequent
07:59investigations disagree. While the impact of the Windscale fire is almost impossible to gauge with
08:06any certainty, it's estimated that around 100 people from nearby areas might have died prematurely
08:13because of exposure to radioactive materials released during the incident.
08:16This death toll might have been much worse were it not for the cautious approach of Chief Engineer
08:22Jonathan Cockcroft. During construction he insisted on the fitting of filters into the
08:28piles at Windscale. This was not a popular decision at the time. Filters would drive up
08:34cost and cause a huge delay in the project, and they were something that other people working
08:40and they were something that other people working on the project were adamant were unnecessary.
08:45So annoyed were some engineers by Cockcroft's insistence on installing filters
08:50that they took to referring to them as Cockcroft's Follies. This mockery stopped immediately when
08:57the incident occurred. The filters, as it turned out, prevented around 95% of the radioactive
09:04material released by the fire from escaping. Thomas Toohey, the reactor manager at the time,
09:11was another unrecognized hero. He oversaw the entire operation to bring the fire under control,
09:18something which included personally climbing up the pile to inspect the fire not just once
09:24but multiple times. Toohey was well aware of the danger, but remained dedicated to his duties.
09:32He even quietly disposed of his radiation detecting badge so that nobody could tell
09:37that he was over his exposure limit and insist that he leave the site. His contribution was
09:44never officially recognized, but he did go on to live a full life, dying at the age of 90
09:50after emigrating to Australia with his family. As for Windscale, it has been renamed Sellafield,
09:57and the site is now dedicated to processing nuclear waste and to decommissioning the
10:02facilities left over from Britain's nuclear weapons program. The site is vast and complex,
10:10and the decommissioning work is painstaking. Even if everything goes to plan the Nuclear
10:16Decommissioning Authority does not expect the site to be fully decommissioned until the year 2144.
10:24The complexity of the site and the dangers involved help to explain the long timescale.
10:31There are around 1,000 buildings on site, many of which are scheduled to be demolished. In some
10:38cases, though, the radiation levels within are too extreme for any human ever to enter. For other
10:44buildings the records detailing exactly what they were used for have been lost. Robots are used to
10:52survey and then to carefully disassemble contaminated structures. The material is
10:58then sealed within concrete blocks or vitrified in solid glass. These containers are stacked in
11:05a warehouse and monitored constantly. So dangerous is the material here that the site has its own
11:12police force and fire service. Rather than relying on an alarm system to sound when something goes
11:19wrong, Sellafield employs an alarm that sounds constantly when there hasn't been a containment
11:24failure. Should it ever cease workers would instantly know that something was amiss.
11:31This intense, dangerous, painstaking work will continue for decades to come. Tens of thousands
11:38of workers from multiple generations will come and go before the danger of wind scale is finally,
11:46finally neutralized.