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 the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Both were dwarfed by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. October 10 is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years). ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... Graphite (named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Greek γραφειν (graphein): to draw/write, for its use in pencils) is one of the allotropes of carbon. ... Core of a small nuclear reactor used for research. ... The Sellafield facility on the Cumbrian coast, United Kingdom Sellafield is the name of a nuclear site, close to the village and railway station of Seascale, operated by the British Nuclear Group, but owned since 1 April 2005 by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. ... Cumbria (IPA: ), is a shire county in the extreme North West of England. ... The radiation warning symbol (trefoil). ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consisted of two pressurized water reactors manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox each inside its own containment building and connected cooling towers. ... Chernobyl reactor number four after the disaster, showing the extensive damage to the main reactor hall (image center) and turbine building (image lower left) The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident that took place at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986 at 01:23 a. ...

Background

The design of Windscale Pile no. 1.

After the Second World War, in 1946, in spite of the participation of many British scientists in the Manhattan Project, and formal agreement of a joint technology-exchange program, the United States government passed legislation that closed its nuclear weapons program to all other countries. Download high resolution version (1200x717, 27 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1200x717, 27 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Manhattan Project resulted in the creation of the first nuclear weapons, and the first-ever nuclear detonation, known as the Trinity test of July 16, 1945. ...

The British government, not wanting to be left behind as a world power in an emerging arms race, embarked on a program to build its own atomic bomb as quickly as possible, because of the American decision to exclude Britain from its weapons plutonium. The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. ...

The Windscale Piles

The reactors were built in a short time near the tiny village of Seascale, Cumbria, and were known as Windscale Pile 1 and Windscale Pile 2, housed in large, concrete buildings a few hundred feet from one another. The reactors were graphite-moderated and air-cooled. Because nuclear fission produces large amounts of heat, it was necessary to cool the reactor cores by blowing cold air through channels in the graphite. Hot air was then exhausted out of the back of the core and up the chimney. Filters were added late into construction at the insistence of Sir John Cockcroft and these were housed in galleries at the very top of the discharge stacks. They were deemed unnecessary, a waste of money and time and presented something of an engineering headache, being added very late in construction in vast concrete houses at the muzzles of the 400-ft chimneys. Due to this, they were known as 'Cockcroft's Folly' by workers and engineers. As it was, 'Cockcroft's Folly' probably prevented a disaster from becoming a catastrophe. Graphite (named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Greek γραφειν (graphein): to draw/write, for its use in pencils) is one of the allotropes of carbon. ... For the generation of electrical power by fission, see Nuclear power plant An induced nuclear fission event. ... See also: John Cockroft (politician) Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (May 27, 1897 - September 18, 1967) was a British physicist. ...

Core design

The reactors themselves were an octagonal arrangement of graphite blocks, with vertical shafts for control rods cut into them and horizontal channels through which cans of uranium and Isotope cartridges could be passed, to expose them to neutron radiation and produce plutonium and radioisotopes, respectively. Fuel and isotopes were fed into the channels in the front of the reactor, the 'charge face', and spent fuel was then pushed all the way through the core and out of the back - the 'discharge face' - into a water duct for initial cooling prior to retrieval and processing to extract the plutonium. General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Standard atomic weight 238. ... Neutron radiation consists of free neutrons. ... General Name, Symbol, Number plutonium, Pu, 94 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery white Standard atomic weight (244) g·mol−1 Electron configuration [Rn] 5f6 7s2 Electrons per shell 2, 8, 18, 32, 24, 8, 2 Physical properties Phase solid Density (near r. ... A radionuclide is an atom with an unstable nucleus. ...

Fuel

Unenriched Uranium metal in aluminium cans with fins to improve cooling was used for the production of plutonium. As a result it is likely that the burnup of the fuel would have been kept low to prevent the generation of large amounts of the heavier plutonium isotopes (²⁴⁰Pu, ²⁴¹Pu etc). General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Standard atomic weight 238. ... General Name, Symbol, Number aluminium, Al, 13 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 3, p Appearance silvery Standard atomic weight 26. ... General Name, Symbol, Number plutonium, Pu, 94 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery white Standard atomic weight (244) g·mol−1 Electron configuration [Rn] 5f6 7s2 Electrons per shell 2, 8, 18, 32, 24, 8, 2 Physical properties Phase solid Density (near r. ...

Isotope cartridges

The following substances were placed inside metal cans and subjected to neutron irradation to create radioisotopes. Both the target material and some of the product isotopes are listed below. Of these, the Polonium-210 release made the most significant contribution to the collective dose on the general population.^[1]

• lithium-magnesium alloy
• Tritium
• Aluminium-nitride, ¹⁴C
• Potassium chloride, ³⁶Cl
• Cobalt, ⁶⁰Co
• Thulium
• Thallium
• Antimony
• Bismuth oxide
• Polonium, ²¹⁰Po
• Thorium, ²³³U

General Name, Symbol, Number lithium, Li, 3 Chemical series alkali metals Group, Period, Block 1, 2, s Appearance silvery white/grey Standard atomic weight 6. ... General Name, Symbol, Number magnesium, Mg, 12 Chemical series alkaline earth metals Group, Period, Block 2, 3, s Appearance silvery white solid at room temp Standard atomic weight 24. ... An alloy is a homogeneous mixture of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resulting material has metallic properties. ... Tritium (symbol T or 3H) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. ... General Name, Symbol, Number aluminium, Al, 13 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 3, p Appearance silvery Standard atomic weight 26. ... Definition The nitride ion is very very gay and retarded A nitride (compound) is a compound that has nitrogen with more electropositive elements. ... The chemical compound potassium chloride (KCl) is a metal halide composed of potassium and chlorine. ... wikipedia sucks big balls For other uses, see Cobalt (disambiguation). ... General Name, Symbol, Number thulium, Tm, 69 Chemical series lanthanides Group, Period, Block ?, 6, f Appearance silvery gray Atomic mass 168. ... General Name, Symbol, Number thallium, Tl, 81 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 6, p Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 204. ... General Name, Symbol, Number antimony, Sb, 51 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 15, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous grey Standard atomic weight 121. ... Bismite is a bismuth oxide mineral, Bi2O3. ... General Name, Symbol, Number polonium, Po, 84 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 16, 6, p Appearance silvery Standard atomic weight (209) g·mol−1 Electron configuration [Xe] 4f14 5d10 6s2 6p4 Electrons per shell 2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 6 Physical properties Phase solid Density (near r. ... General Name, Symbol, Number thorium, Th, 90 Chemical series Actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 232. ...

Wigner energy

When the reactors were being built, little was known about the behavior of graphite when exposed to neutrons. Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner discovered that graphite, when bombarded by neutrons, suffers dislocations in its crystalline structure causing a build up of potential energy. This energy, if allowed to accumulate, could escape spontaneously in a powerful rush of heat. 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. This worried British scientists and a means of safely releasing the stored energy was sought. The only viable solution was also extremely simple: an annealing process, in which the graphite core was heated to 250 degrees Celsius and the crystalline structure of the graphite expanded enough to allow the displaced molecules to slip back into place and gradually release their stored energy (as heat) as they did so, causing a uniform release which spread throughout the core. Annealing succeeded in preventing the buildup of Wigner energy, but the monitoring equipment, and indeed the reactor itself and all of its ancillaries (such as the cooling system) were never designed for this. Each annealing cycle was slightly different and were also growing more difficult as time went on; many of the later cycles had to be repeated and higher and higher temperatures were required to start the annealing process. It was also found that some pockets of Wigner energy remained that had not been released on previous occasions. The annealing was performed with the reactor charged; fully fueled. Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (Hungarian Wigner Pál Jenő) (November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian physicist and mathematician who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and... The Wigner effect (named for its discoverer, Eugene Wigner), also known as the discomposition effect, is the displacement of atoms in a solid caused by neutron radiation. ... Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment wherein the microstructure of a material is altered, causing changes in its properties such as strength and hardness. ...

Because they were built hastily and during a time when little was known about reactor design, the reactors had a number of serious design flaws that contributed to the disaster. Graphite is flammable in air and air was being fed into the reactors constantly for cooling, so there was a constant fire hazard. It seems, however, that the graphite in the reactor did not actually catch fire. The damage to the graphite moderator was found to be localized around burning fuel elements.^[2] The direct venting of the cooling air to the atmosphere meant that any radioactive material released by the core which slipped through the filters would be released into the countryside. The annealing phases were not part of the original plan, so what thermocouples there were, were placed in positions in the reactor to monitor normal operations, but not to monitor the annealing process. This allowed unknown hot spots to form. The reactor's fuel, metallic uranium, burns if it becomes too hot, unlike the uranium dioxide used in modern reactors. UO2 A black, radioactive, crystalline powder, once used in the late 1800s to mid-1900s in ceramic glazes. ...

The accident

Ignition

On October 7, 1957, operators began an annealing cycle for Windscale Pile no. 1 by switching the cooling fans to low power and stabilizing the reactor at low power. The next day, to carry out the annealing, the operators increased the power to the reactor. When it appeared that the annealing process was taking place, control rods were lowered back into the core to shut down the reactor, but it soon became apparent that the Wigner energy release was not spreading through the core, but dwindling prematurely. The operators withdrew the control rods again to apply a second nuclear heating and complete the annealing process. As already explained, some thermocouples were not in the hottest parts of the core and it is now known that some areas were considerably hotter than others. This and the second heating are suspected to be the deciding factors behind the fire, although the precise cause is not known. The official report suggests that a can of uranium ruptured and oxidized causing further overheating and the fire, but a more recent report suggests that it may actually have been a magnesium/lithium isotope cartridge. All that was visible on the instruments was a gentle increase in temperature, which was to be expected during the Wigner release. is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment wherein the microstructure of a material is altered, causing changes in its properties such as strength and hardness. ...

Early in the morning on October 10, it was suspected that something unusual was going on. The temperature in the core was supposed to gradually fall as Wigner release ended, but the monitoring equipment showed something more ambiguous was going on and one thermocouple indicated that core temperature was instead rising. It was then realised that the radiation monitoring devices in the filter galleries at the top of the discharge stack were at full scale reading and the shift foreman declared a site emergency. No one at Windscale was now in any doubt that Pile Number 1 was in serious trouble. October 10 is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years). ...

The fire

Operators tried to examine the pile with a remote scanner but it had jammed. Tom Hughes, second in command to the Reactor Manager, suggested examining the reactor personally and so he and another operator marched down to the charge face of the reactor, clad in protective gear. A fuel channel inspection plug was taken out close to a thermocouple registering high temperatures and it was then that the operators saw that the fuel was red hot.

"An inspection plug was taken out," said Tom Hughes in a later interview, "and we saw, to our complete horror, four channels of fuel glowing bright cherry red."

There was no doubt that the reactor was now on fire; and had been for almost 48 hours. Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy donned full protective equipment and breathing apparatus and scaled the 80 feet to the top of the reactor building, where he stood atop the reactor lid to examine the rear of the reactor, the discharge face. Here he reported a dull red luminescence visible, lighting up the void between the back of the reactor and the rear containment: red hot fuel cartridges glowing in the fuel channels on the discharge face. He returned to the reactor upper containment several times throughout the incident, at the height of which a fierce conflagration was raging from the discharge face and playing on the back of the reinforced concrete containment - concrete whose specifications insisted that it must be kept below a certain temperature to prevent its disintegration and collapse.

Initial fire fighting attempts

Operators were unsure what to do about the fire. First, they tried to blow the flames out by putting the blowers onto full power and increasing the cooling, but predictably this simply fueled the fire. Tom Hughes and his colleague had already ejected some undamaged fuel cartridges from around the blaze and Tom Tuohy suggested trying to eject some from the heart of the fire, by bludgeoning them through the reactor and into the cooling pond behind it with scaffolding poles. This proved impossible and the fuel rods refused to budge, no matter how much force was applied. The poles were withdrawn with their ends red hot and, once, a pole was returned red hot and dripping with molten metal. Hughes knew this had to be molten irradiated uranium and this caused serious radiation problems on the charge hoist itself.

"It [the exposed fuel channel] was white hot," said Hughes' colleague on the charge hoist with him, "it was just white hot. Nobody, I mean, nobody, can believe how hot it could possibly be."

Carbon dioxide

Next, the operators tried to extinguish the fire using carbon dioxide. The new gas-cooled Calder Hall reactors next door had just received a delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide and this was rigged up to the charge face of Windscale Pile 1, but the heat generated by the fire was so extreme that the oxygen was stripped from the carbon atoms and added to the blaze. It is likely that the carbon dioxide reacted to form carbon monoxide in a reaction similar to that used to form producer gas (see town gas for more details). Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. ... Town gas is a generic term referring to manufactured gas produced for sale to consumers and municipalities. ...

CO₂ + C → 2 CO

The use of water

On the morning of Friday October 11 and at its peak, 11 tonnes of uranium were ablaze. Temperatures were becoming extreme (one thermocouple registered 1,300 degrees Celsius) and the biological containment around the stricken reactor was now in severe danger of collapse. Faced with this crisis, the operators decided to use water. This was incredibly risky: molten metal oxidises in contact with water, stripping oxygen from the water molecules and leaving free hydrogen, which could mix with incoming air and explode, tearing open the weakened containment. But there was no other choice. About a dozen hoses were hauled to the charge face of the reactor; their nozzles were cut off and the lines themselves connected to scaffolding poles and fed into fuel channels about a meter above the heart of the fire. is the 284th day of the year (285th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Tom Tuohy then ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief. All cooling and ventilating air entering the reactor was shut off. Tuohy once again hauled himself atop the reactor shielding and ordered the water to be turned on, listening carefully at the inspection holes for any sign of a hydrogen reaction as the pressure was increased. Tuohy climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. During one of the inspections, Tuohy found that the inspection plates - which are removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core - were stuck fast. This, Tuohy reported, was the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.

"I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in interview.

Finally he managed to pull the inspection plate away and was greeted with the unfathomable sight of the fire dying away.

"First the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down," he described, "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," he went on to say, "but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation."

Water was kept flowing through the pile for a further 24 hours until it was completely cold.

The aftermath

The fire itself released an estimated 20,000 curies (700 terabecquerels) of radioactive material into the nearby countryside. Of particular concern was the radioactive isotope iodine-131, which has a half-life of only 8 days but is taken up by the human body and stored in the thyroid. As a result, consumption of iodine-131 often leads to cancer of the thyroid. The curie (symbol Ci) is a former unit of radioactivity, defined as 3. ... The becquerel (symbol Bq) is the SI derived unit of radioactivity, defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. ... Iodine-131 (131I), also called radioiodine, is a radioisotope of iodine. ... Half-Life For a quantity subject to exponential decay, the half-life is the time required for the quantity to fall to half of its initial value. ... Cancer is a class of diseases or disorders characterized by uncontrolled division of cells and the ability of these to spread, either by direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion, or by implantation into distant sites by metastasis (where cancer cells are transported through the bloodstream or lymphatic system). ...

No one was evacuated from the surrounding area, but there was concern that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500km² of nearby countryside was destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month. A glass of cows milk. ...

Public reactions varied. No one panicked. Reported comments were overwhelmingly calm and downplayed the seriousness of the accident. Many were involved with the plant, while others could see no ill effects and assumed they were safe. Several of those interviewed by reporters said that they were unhappy about how the media was accusing them of panic. The most serious sign of local distress was a 15% drop in milk sales in nearby Carlisle. , Carlisle is a city in the far north-west of England, and is the largest urban area in Cumbria. ...

Nationally, the accident was generally reported with fear in the tabloids and with restraint by the broadsheets. The News Chronicle described it as "the accident experts said could not happen", and boasted an interview with "Britain's first atom-dust casualty". The Manchester Guardian, on the other hand, emphasized the strength of safety measures already in place. Coverage of the milk ban tended to stress how little damage it could do to an adult. In spite of occasionally hyperbolic coverage, the accident had no appreciable long term impact on British attitudes to nuclear power. A tabloid is a newspaper — especially in the United Kingdom — that uses the tabloid format, which is roughly 23½ by 14¾ inches per spread. ... Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ... The News Chronicle was a British Liberal newspaper which closed in 1960, being absorbed into the right-wing Daily Mail. ... The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...

The reactor was unsalvageable; all the fuel rods that could be removed were, and the reactor bioshield was sealed and left intact. Approximately 6,700 fire-damaged fuel elements and 1,700 fire-damaged isotope canisters remain in the pile. The damaged reactor core is still slightly warm as a result of continuing nuclear reactions.^[3] Windscale Pile no. 2, though undamaged by the fire, was considered too unsafe for continued use. It was shut down shortly afterward. No air-cooled reactors have been built since. The final removal of fuel from the damaged reactor is scheduled to begin in 2008 and continue for a further four years.^[4]

The Windscale site was decontaminated and is still in use; several more modern nuclear reactors are there now. Part of the site was later renamed Sellafield, after being transferred to BNFL in a part-privatization. Decontamination of humans is usually done by a three step procedure, separated by sex: removal of clothing, washing, and reclothing. ... The Sellafield facility on the Cumbrian coast, United Kingdom Sellafield is the name of a nuclear site, close to the village and railway station of Seascale, operated by the British Nuclear Group, but owned since 1 April 2005 by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. ... British Nuclear Fuels plc or BNFL manufactures and transports nuclear fuel (notably MOX), runs reactors, generates and sells electricity, reprocesses and manages spent fuel (mainly at Sellafield), and decommissions nuclear plants and other similar facilities. ...

In the 1990s, the UKAEA began plans to decommission, disassemble and clean up, both piles; the decommissioning is now partially complete. Plans are being explored to safely remove the fire-damaged core, which is still highly radioactive and laced with radioisotopes and irradiated fuel. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was established in 1954 as a statutory corporation to oversee and pioneer the development of nuclear energy within the United Kingdom. ...

Comparison with other accidents

The fire has been described as the worst nuclear accident until Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979. However since neither event resulted in immediate casualties this assertion is dependent upon epidemiological assessments. In contrast some accidents did result in immediate casualties, such as the 1961 incident at the SL-1 plant in Idaho which killed three operators, or the criticality accident which killed Louis Slotin in 1946. All of these nuclear accidents were dwarfed by the Chernobyl accident of 1986. Pathways from airborne radioactive contamination to man This is a list of notable accidents involving nuclear material. ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consisted of two pressurized water reactors manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox each inside its own containment building and connected cooling towers. ... Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. ... The SL-1, the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was a U.S. experimental military nuclear power reactor. ... Official language(s) English [1] Capital Boise Largest city Boise Area  Ranked 14th  - Total 83,642 sq mi (216,632 km²)  - Width 305 miles (491 km)  - Length 479 miles (771 km)  - % water 0. ... A criticality accident (also sometimes referred to as an excursion or power excursion) occurs when a nuclear chain reaction is accidentally allowed to occur in fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium. ... A sketch used by doctors to determine the amount of radiation to which each person in the room had been exposed during the excursion. ... The nuclear power plant at Chernobyl prior to the completion of the sarcophagus. ...

See also

• Chernobyl disaster
• Nuclear and radiation accidents
• Nuclear meltdown
• Radioactive contamination
• Three Mile Island accident

Chernobyl reactor number four after the disaster, showing the extensive damage to the main reactor hall (image center) and turbine building (image lower left) The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident that took place at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986 at 01:23 a. ... This article covers notable accidents involving nuclear devices and radioactive materials. ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consisted of two pressurized water reactors manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox each inside its own containment building and connected cooling towers. ... The radiation warning symbol (trefoil). ... Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station consisted of two pressurized water reactors manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox each inside its own containment building and connected cooling towers. ...

References

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems, in 1993, for document exchange. ... The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems, in 1993, for document exchange. ... The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems, in 1993, for document exchange. ...

Further reading

• Windscale, 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident, Lorna Arnold
• An Assessment of the Radiological Impact of the Windscale Reactor Fire, Oct., 1957, Nov., 1982 (NRPB Reports) M J Crick, G.S. Linsley
• An airborne radiometric survey of the Windscale area, October 19-22nd,1957 (A.E.R.E. reports;no.R2890) Atomic Energy Research Establishment
• The deposition of strontium 89 and strontium 90 on agricultural land and their entry into milk after the reactor accident at Windscale in October, 1957 (A.H.S.B) United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
• Accident at Windscale No.1 Pile on 10 October,1957 (Cmnd.302)
• Chernobyl: worst but not first, Walter C. Patterson, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists August/September 1986

Walter C (Walt) Patterson (born November 4, 1936 in Winnipeg, Canada) arrived in the United Kingdom in 1960 and married in 1966. ... Cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with the famous Doomsday Clock set at seven minutes to midnight. ...

External links

• A description of the accident by a British tourist agency
• Nuclear Tourist describing the accident in detail
• The UKAEA site describing the reactors and their decommissioning
• A newspaper article written shortly after the fire