Engineering Failures

The Windscale Fire

A historic engineering failure that I researched was “The Windscale Fire”, this was the worst nuclear accident that has ever occurred in Great Britain at a nuclear plant in 1957. A fire had started because there was a buildup of energy that was from the temperature being increased, this was the first major release of radiation. When operators realized that the condition was becoming dangerous, the fire had already begun to eat up the graphite( from a 400ft chimney). They tried to fix the situation by turning the fans to high, which caused the flames to ignite even more. The operators then attempted to subdue it using liquid carbon dioxide. Finally, when the fans were shut down, the hoses were turned on and the water extinguished the flames, which was the second major release of radiation.

Scientists found, with more research, that the real reason for the fire was a mistake that was made while preforming the Wigner Energy method. Also, the government made it look like it was individual’s faults instead of the plant’s. The reactors were allowed to run way longer than they should have been, this radiation ended up killing roughly 100 people, and caused an estimated 200 cancers. Although it is hard to pinpoint individual deaths to the fire.

Sources:

Highfield, Roger. “Windscale Fire: ‘We Were Too Busy to Panic’.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 9 Oct. 2007, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3309842/Windscale-fire-We-were-too-busy-to-panic.html.

“THE 1957 WINDSCALE FIRE.” The 1957 Windscale Reactor Fire, EFN, ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/windscale-1957-accident.htm.