Windscale Disaster

An investigation into the Windscale Nuclear Disaster for my IB ESS SL class.

1. WINDSCALE/SELLAFIELD United Kingdom – 17 October 1957 Megan Kedzlie

2. A DEADLY DREAM The use of the A-Bomb to end WWII had caused a desperate arms race to begin around the globe. In an effort to join the efforts, the UK, US, and Canada entered the Quebec Agreement, acknowledging their choice to share information from August 19 th , 1945. But after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States began to exclude the British scientists from their information, and soon the tripartite agreement was dissolved.

3. CONTEXT Windscale plant built for UK’s atomic program in the early 1950’s. Project rushed for fears of “falling behind” in nuclear armament treaty with USA. Based to make plutonium for British nuclear bombs. Windscale Pile 1 was completed in October 1950, and Pile 2 completed June 1951 © The Guardian – Permission of Sellafield Ltd.

4. CAUSE OF FIRE On the 10 th of October 1957, workers in the morning noticed the temperature of Pile 2 rising rapidly when the station was moving into a cooling period. With remote-detection systems malfunctioning, they moved on towards the Pile to check on the uranium-filled reactor, and found it to be on fire. © The Guardian – Corbis.

5. KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORKERS Deputy Manager Tom Tuohy climbed to the top of the reactor building and took a complete blast of radiation in order to pour water into the reactor. That had never been tried before, and if it had failed, Cumberland would have been destroyed. “Contamination was everytwhere , on the golf course, in the milk, in chickens… but it was quickly forgotten about,”.

6. THE ACCIDENT 11 tons of uranium sat on fire for three days. Radioactive materials spread across the Lake District for weeks. Workers told to continue make plutonium for the atomic bombs after the collapse. © The Guardian – Rex Features

7. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES For years, Sellafield was a dumping ground for radioactive waste. The Convention for the protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic claimed that Sellafield had dumped approximately 200kg ( 441 lbs.) of plutonium into marine sediment of the Irish Sea. © The Guardian – Rex Features

8. LOCAL HEALTH CONSEQUENCES A 1997 Ministry of Health report stated that instances of leukemia of children living on the English and Irish coasts near Sellafield exceeded the national average by 10 times. One child in sixty in Seascale , the village nearest to the plant, will die of leukemia.

9. CURRENTLY Sellafield Ltd. (a nuclear reprocessing plant near the site of the Windscale plant) faces court after claims they sent four bags of radioactive waste to a landfill facility. This is after a 2 ½ year investigation by the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The UK government also decided to exclude the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant from EU ordered stress tests. These voluntary tests after the effects of Fukushima are to answer health and safety questions raised over the EU’s numerous nuclear facilities. The tests would examine the plants resilience to natural disasters and human error.

10. Bibliography Matlack , Gerry. “The Windscale Disaster.” Damn Interesting. Steven Shirt, 7 May 2007. Web. 21 Oct. 2013 Ainslie, John. “Windscale Accident 1957.” Ban The Bomb. Ban The Bomb, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2013 Dwyer, Paul. “Windscale: A Nuclear Disaster.” BBC News. BBC, 10 May 2007. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. “The Story of Sellafield Nuclear Power Station : In Pictures.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 22. Oct. 2013.