On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

OCTOBER 10, 1957: Britain’s worst nuclear accident took place on this day in 1957 after a reactor caught fire at the Windscale plutonium plant that was providing fuel for atom bombs.

The blaze at the Windscale plutonium plant - later called Sellafield - raged for three days, spread radiation across northern Europe and caused at least 100 known deaths from cancer.

In the aftermath of the West’s first nuclear disaster, a British Pathé newsreel shows milk being poured down the drain.

Dairy produce from cows living in 200 square miles of farmland surrounding the plant, which was later called Sellafield, was banned for three weeks.

The newsreel, which played down the radiation danger after the Government tried to minimise public fear of the new power, also filmed reactor technicians, Stan Ritson.

An official inquiry by British atom bomb pioneer Sir William Penney found there was “no immediate damage to health of any of the public or of the workers at Windscale”.

Yet subsequent studies have shown that the radiation contamination was at least double what his highly censored report claimed.

An atomic cloud covered an area stretching from Norway to Germany and the leak has been attributed to at least 200 local cases of cancer – with half proving fatal.

The nuclear disaster came just a month after a more serious leak in the Soviet Union following an explosion at the the Mayak bomb factory, 1,200 miles east of Moscow.

Radioactive fallout across 5,800 square miles forced the evacuation of 10,000 people, although authorities tried to hush it up.

Several other disasters have occurred across the globe since then, including the Three Mile Island meltdown in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania in 1979.

Yet all have been dwarfed by the 1986 Chernobyl Reactor explosion in the Soviet Union, which released 1,000 times the radiation of Windscale and killed 9,000 people.

A 1,000 square-mile area around the former power plant in modern-day Ukraine remains is barred to members of the public.

Given the recent nuclear disasters, can we really trust governments and those in charge to keep us safe from further nuclear disasters? Given that the fallout from Chernobyl still prohibits some animals from re-entering the food chain and cetain land being designated as unfit, should we even be considering nuclear as a realistic alternative?

Given that the waste has to be buried (and I'm not too optimistic about our ability to produce 100% iron clad guaranteed storage units for the waste) for 100s of years, isn't this a worse problem to be leaving our children with?

There are sheep on the Island kept high up in the hills and distinctively marked so that they don't enter the food chain and the land is still contaminated from Chernobyl - should we have learned that we just don't know how to handle it enough to risk further nuclear accidents?


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/on-this-day...l?vp=1#qqT6U8B

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

More modern plants are much safer and perhaps sadly it's a cost we pay for ever more need for cheap electricity.

We don't seem to have any other ideas to help ourselves and using less is not going to happen so ......

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

No Kal - you cant trust Governments or Utility companies. They go ahead, damn the consequences.
If there was an alternative - the answer would be simple and no need for protesters. There isn't sadly, its a mess and a wait and see .....

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

How old was the reactor that blew up recently? I can't remember if I've heard that information.

No, I don't trust them Pats - they will sell ordinary people down the river if they can save a few bob on safety (as is what happened with Sellafield). Until they learn to safely dispose of the waste material, it should, imo, be fiercely opposed. If people have to learn to cut back on energy consumption, then so be it.

I can be ruthless

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

People need to cut back, so much is wasted on silly OTT lighting for a start !
Shouldn't be allowed, instead of the bedroom tax - they should have done it on lighting !

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

I remember the Windscale accident, they do the usual silly old trick and change the name to Sellafield, I'm not sure but I think they even changed it again to something else, so obvious they want to hide something, like a child throwing a broken plate into the bin before mommy discovers it. They gave out the wrong figures and information to the public as usual and said there was nothing to fear from nuclear energy, if not then why are we all not using it today, look what happened in Japan recently, and that was not an old nuclear station, top of the range stuff there. As far as I know this stuff is deadly and almost impossible to get rid of the waste it leaves. However, when they are 100% sure it's safe then we'll all be delighted to have it.

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

Always been very glad that Australia has no nuclear power, just one tiny reactor for producing medical isotopes.

Every so often a head pops up proclaiming the joys of nuclear power but it is usually soon kicked in. It appears we would rather sell all our uranium to foreigners who need it, you can't blame us really when the country is made of coal and iron.

Re: On This Day: Britain's Worst Nuclear Accident

Just heard on the radio silly person going on about offices lit up after working hours, would love to know how she thinks the cleaners could clean if the lights went out strictly at 6pm and how the people doing over time or night shifts would manage !