First major nuclear accident
No one will know precisely what happened at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Windscale plant last Thursday afternoon until an inquiry is undertaken, but it is certain to be considerably more complicated than first reports from the AEA's staff have been inclined to suggest.
One of the plant's 7-year-old reactors had been shut down and the work that was being carried out on it started a fire in the centre of the reactor which was fierce enough to carry vaporised fission products the whole distance up the 400-foot chimney and through the filters at the top. The fire proved so difficult to control that hoses had to play water down the fuel channels into the heart of the reactor in a desperate attempt to control the temperature.
This is neither a routine plant breakdown nor a minor mishap. It is a major accident. For the first ...
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