Brief History of: The Windscale fire

hello this video is sponsored by in sixty learning more on that later and now without further ado let's get started the year is 1957 and liker the first an alone space orbits TF parent willem takes over as Prime Minister after Anthony Eden's resignation also in 1957 gave birth to Sid Vicious Stephen Fry and Martin Luther King the third a little-known place on the Cumbrian coast would be indelibly etched into world history nearly thirty years before the disaster at Chernobyl that left Pripyat and abandoned ruin a fire nearly caused a similar outcome the event left a legacy of contamination and cancer in its wake later estimates would count of two hundred and forty linked cases of thyroid cancer the Windscale fire would be considered as one of the worst nuclear incidents in history until 22 years later at free Mile Island many lessons would be learned from win scale as the true dangers of nuclear power became apparent and the event would weather away the optimism of his promising new power source called nuclear wind scale started out as our RF Sellafield in 1942 as an ordnance factory at low Sellafield a remote and isolated site on the coast built there due to the hazardous materials set to be made on the site after the surrender of Japan the factory was closed down and ownership was briefly handed over to corals for the use as a textile factory however the site was reacquired by the Ministry of supply for the use of the creation of nuclear materials for the United Kingdom's atomic weapons program and construction began in 1947 at this time the site was renamed win scale the project took over 5000 workers to complete and created two air-cooled open-circuit graphite moderated reactors known as har one and powell number two completed in 1950 and 1951 respectively each pile was housed inside concrete buildings just a few hundred feet apart for cover the reactors had a large block of graphite with channels drill for it for the fuel cartridges each cartridge had a uranium rod encased in an aluminium canister to protect it from the air as uranium can become highly reactive when hot and runs the risk of catching fire the uranium rods were inserted in the front of the core with new rods being added at even intervals this push the other cartridges in the channels towards the rear of the reactor eventually caused them to fall out in the back into a water tank where they could be collected we designed the PALS to queue for the Manhattan Project however the design used a passive air system to cool a core instead of water to reduce the risk of a loss-of-coolant accident each pile had a chimney used to pull air to the core cooling the cartridges for additional cooling fans were used to blow air out of the chimneys a design flaw became apparent now a cartridge could come out of the back of the core and miss the water tank and hit the floor causing a fire and run the risk of releasing deadly uranium oxide into the air to be blown out by the chimneys fans this potential flaw caused the project leader Sir John Cockcroft to order filters to be added to the chimneys because of the cost and effort needed to fit the filters they gained the name cross folly site was developed further for the 1950s with Magnox reactors constructed across the river at Calder Hall once the plant became active the issue of cartridge is missing the water tank realize more than anticipated so much so that staff had to regularly walk the corps sweepingly used cartridges into the cooling channel some cartridges even got caught inside the core bursting open testing showed that radiation levels around the plant and nearby village had risen but this information was kept secret on the 7th of October 1957 staff working on par 1 noticed that the cause temperature had risen higher than normal to counter Atmos a Wigner release was ordered which heated at the core evenly this release had been done eight times in the past the core did not heat up evenly and as some parts started to cool down channel 2 0 v 3 began to increase in temperature another release was ordered on the 8th this time the heat rose evenly and was deemed success however in the morning of the 10th the core didn't cool down as predicted after Wigner release reaching 400 degrees centigrade the engineers ordered the cooling fans to be sped up the radiation detectors in the chimneys recorded high levels of contaminants it was assumed that a cartridge making its way for the core had split open this has happened before but the assumption was wrong I'm sure you all love learning about interesting topics as you're watching a plainly difficult video after all so I wanted to tell you about in 60 learning they produce masterfully crafted books ebooks and audio books that you can joy in just 60 minutes and if you're like me that's pretty useful as very definitely not enough hours in the day my favorite in 60 learning volumes so far are Jesse James the infamous outlaw which I listen to an audio and Leland Stanford the double life of a railroad tycoon which I read recently I especially like the audio since I can multitask when I'm walking my dog on the commute or like recently on a road trip in the description you'll find a link to the learning list where you'll get the first two sections of Alexander the Great student of Aristotle descendants of heroes for free channel two zero five three the source of the uneven heat didn't have a split cartridge but instead had a cartridge on fire due to the fans speeding up the fire spread to other channels and radiation levels increased further still staff outside the plant could see smoke coming out of the chimney of par 1 as the heat rose in the core the operating staff began to realize that the core had actually caught fire Tom used the assistant reactor manager and another member of staff put on protective clothing and went to personally inspect the face of the core Hughes later said in an interview we saw to our complete horror four channels of fuel glowing bright cherry red Tom - Oi the reactor manager then climbed the reactor building in full protective equipment to inspect the reactor exit where he - saw glowing fuel the reactor operators tried to call a court by telling the fans to maximum speed but this again fan the flames Tom choice suggested pushing some of the burning cartridges after the reactor by using scaffolding poles however by this time the core was white hot and the cartridges were impossible to move one of Hugh's colleagues would later say it was just white-hot nobody I mean nobody can believe how hot it could possibly be carbon dioxide was ordered from Kula halls reactors to try and suffocate the flames but the attempts were inefficient as sufficient ''tis could not be administered to the cause by the 11th 11 tons of uranium were on fire with temperatures recorded at 1,300 degrees centigrade and the reactor core was close to collapse she who suggested using water to douse the flames but this plan was risky as water could react with the oxidizing molten metal leaving pure hydrogen and essentially having the ingredients for an explosion with no other choices joy ordered the water to be used several houses had their nozzles cut off and directly placed inside the channels of the core one meter about the heart of the fire Choi once again climbed a reactor to observe the water to check for signs of the waters hydrogen reacting with the core unfortunately the plan didn't pay off and the water fell to extinguish the fire the decision was then taken to shut off the air calling and events to the reactor Choi ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the fire chief once again sure he climbed the reactor building to report on the state of fire gradually the flames started to subside the inspection plates used to view parts of the core were unappealable this was due to the fire trying to suck as much air in as possible to keep burning Juhi later said I have no doubt it was even sucking air through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself the first flames when fanned the flames reduced and a glow began to die down I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out I did stand to one side sort of hopefully but if you're staring right into the core of a shutdown reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation the fire was finally out but water kept on pumping through the core for another 24 hours until it was stone-cold the fire released 20,000 Curie's of iodine-131 594 Curie's of cesium 137 and 320 4,000 Curie's of xenon won free free although this numbers been disputed to be higher it would have been even higher if it wasn't for the filters known as Crofts folly radioactive material sped across UK and europe the dispersal of iodine-131 was linked to cancer even though it only has a half-life of eight days but the way the human body consumes the material is by storing it in the thyroid around 2 million litres of milk from 500 kilometers squared was destroyed by dilution and eventually dumped in the Irish Sea however no one was ever evacuated from the surrounding areas the effects of the event were played down by the British government as at the time plans were set by Prime Minister Macmillan and the u.s. President Dwight d Eisenhower of having a joint nuclear weapons project unfortunately due to the government's wanting to sweep the event under the rug many of the staff had played a key role in preventing a much larger disaster went unnoticed even though Tom joy had taken on one of the most dangerous jobs by personally viewing the reactor and his molten fuel cartridges his exposure to radiation didn't cause many long-term effects as he lived to a ripe old age of 90 the wider Windscale site was decontaminated and continued to see use however power number one remain was some 1700 fire damage cartridges left in the park or the reactor was sealed off and the reactor tank itself remains sealed with some 15 tons of uranium although power 2 was not affected by the fire it too was shut down and the construction of air cooled reactors hasn't happened since the site is still active being renamed sellafield and is being used for fuel reprocessing whilst reactors at both wind scale including par 1 and Calder are being decommissioned [Music] thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you did please leave comments down below I always like new suggestions and once again thank you so much for us reaching 10,000 subscribers and always left to say is thank you very much for watching

Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 555,317

Rating: 4.7862768 out of 5

Keywords: windscale, plainly difficult, education, history, learning, zepherus, uk, in60, the guardian, chernobyl, kyshtym, brief history of

Id: j5wZoswSNwc

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018