THE WINDSCALE FIRE

Akasha Purohit and Kelly Meehan

HISTORY
The Windscale Fire took place at the Windscale nuclear processing plant in Cumberland, which is known as Cumbria today. The project was started to compete with America and the Soviet Union in the arms race. After the Windscale fire was put out, Harold Macmillan covered up the incident, saying that it was the Windscale employees who were in error. This cover-up was used to stop the United States from finding out that England was trying to make an atomic bomb.

Cumberland

Cumbria

SAFETY CONCERN
The British were not experienced with nuclear processing, Windscale was their first nuclear reactor. They did not account for the Wigner Effect on graphite cores, which was the underlying cause of the incident.

Eugene WIgner

THE WIGNER EFFECT

Displacement of atoms caused by neutron radiation.

Neutrons hit the crystal lattice structure of Graphite and displace carbon atoms.
These displaced atoms either find other vacancies within the structure, or become interstitials. Build up of interstitials causes a build up of potential energy, which eventually releases as heat.

ANNEALING
Way to combat the Wigner Effect

Core is heated to 250C

Displaced carbon atoms slip back into the crystal lattice structure Allows for a gradual release of heat This process was difficult to do and required higher temperatures each consecutive time.

Required uranium
This process wasnt kept in mind during the initial design of the plant, monitoring devices for the process werent working properly.

IGNITION
Britain began focusing on the production of tritium

Required heating the graphite core to higher temperatures

This decreased the safety level of the plant, but was overlooked due to the high quantities of tritium being produced Annealing process was started, but somewhere during the process it is speculated that a can of uranium had ruptured and oxidized, which added to the fire.

TWO UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS AT ELIMINATING THE FIRE

Oxygen

Since the fans were turned off due to the fact that certain parts of the atomic bomb had to be made at high temperatures, a decision was made to turn the blowers in the nuclear plant back on to cool down the fire and potentially put it out. However, this only caused an increase in temperature.
Carbon Dioxide

Since oxygen was not useful, workers decided that carbon dioxide had the potential to extinguish the flame. The plant had just received 25 tons of carbon dioxide, however, workers were unable to properly haul the carbon dioxide to the fire, and there was an insufficient amount that could be used at once.

THE DEBATE
With both attempts of carbon dioxide and oxygen failing to work, a new contention arose. Options for how to put the fire out were running low, and Tom Hughes, who was one of the employees and key figures in putting the fire out, decided that it was between dousing the fire with water or waiting for it to go out on its own. There were several problems with both aspects. If the fire was allowed to remain, not only would it progressively get worse, it would also cause large amounts of radiation to spread miles from the site. This would risk the lives of people of countless people. If the employees tried to put the fire out with the use of water, the nuclear plant had the potential to explode. As water is added to molten metal, the metal can oxidize and will release hydrogen gas. This hydrogen gas is extremely explosive when introduced to outside air. The emission of this hydrogen gas could cause a nuclear explosion, killing all of the people left in the plant.

SUCCESS IN ELIMINATING THE FIRE

Tom Hughes decided that it would be best to subject the fire to water, instead of risking the lives of thousands through radiation poisoning. Unable to tell whether the water was working in decreasing the temperature when added to the molten metal, and with poor knowledge of how much hydrogen gas was being emitted, Tom Hughes got rid of his radiation recording badge and climbed the Windscale pile 1 to monitor the inspection holes that contained the fire. Upon several inspection, Tom Hughes saw that the fire was dying down and also that the hydrogen gas was not building up. With the constant amount of water being poured on the fire, the potential disaster was able to be averted.

AFTERMATH OF THE WINDSCALE FIRE

Overall, the design of modern nuclear reactors are different today than when the Windscale fire occurred, preventing an incident like this from happening again. After the fire was stopped, the production and use of air-cooled reactors in nuclear power plants stopped. The Windscale piles have not been used since. The amount of radiation that leaked out from the fire at the Windscale piles resulted in approximately 240 cases of cancer.

Windscale

Sellafield

REFERENCES
Arnold, L. Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident; Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2007. Crick, M.J.; Linsley, G.S. An Assessment of the Radiological Impact of the Windscale Reactor Fire, October 1957. Int J Radiat Biol Relat Stud Phys Chem Med [Online] 1984. 46, (5) 479-506. http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09553008414551711 (accessed April 10, 2011). Glasstone, S.; Sesonske, A. Nuclear Reactor Engineering: Reactor Systems Engineering; Chapman & Hall: London, 1994.