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WINDSCALE 1957 Also by Lorna Arnold

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WINDSCALE 1957 Also by Lorna Arnold A VERY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: British Atomic Weapon Trials in Australia Windscale 1957 Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident Lorna Arnold Foreword by Sir Alan Cottrell, FRS Second Edition MACMILLAN ©The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority 1992, 1995 Foreword© Sir Alan Cottrell 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1995 978-0-333-65036-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition 1992 Second edition 1995 Published by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-48253-7 ISBN 978-1-349-24008-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24008-1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Contents List of Appendices viii Foreword by Sir Alan Cottrell, FRS ix Note on Documentation X List of Abbreviations xi Glossary xiv Introduction to the Second Edition XX Introduction xxi Figures xxiv 1 Britain's Atomic Bomb 1 2 Windscale's Origins 8 Design and construction 11 3 After Hurricane 19 A novel kind of organisation 19 The atomic bomb programme 20 The civil power programme 21 Future systems 24 The H-bomb programme 25 Commitments and resources 26 Windscale after Hurricane 29 The Windscale men 39 4 The Ninth Anneal 42 Monday, 7 October 44 Tuesday, 8 October 45 Wednesday, 9 October 47 Thursday, 10 October 47 Friday, 11 October 50 Saturday, 12 October 52 Environmental contamination 53 5 Damage Assessment and Damage Control 60 Consultations 60 Preliminary inquiries 64 Action: radiological surveys 71 v Vl Contents Action: cleaning up 73 The production programme: assessing the impact 75 6 The Penney Inquiry and the First White Paper 77 The Penney report 77 'What do we say?' 85 A matter of collective responsibility 86 Health and safety 87 Graphite 89 Further inquiries 92 The White Paper (Cmnd 302) 93 Telling the world 94 7 Three More White Papers 98 The first Fleck report, on the organisation of certain parts of the UKAEA (Cmnd 338) 98 The second Fleck report, on the organisation for control of health and safety in the UKAEA (Cmnd 342) 104 The third Fleck report, on technical evaluation (Cmnd 471) 110 The IPCS disagrees 117 Pile No.2 121 8 Causes: An Accident Waiting to Happen 124 Some sceptics 127 Reinterpreting the evidence 128 Conclusions 133 9 Appraisals and Reappraisals 136 First thoughts, 1957 137 Report to the Geneva Conference, 1958 138 Further thoughts from the MRC, 1959/60 139 Reassessments, 1963-76 143 After Three Mile Island, 197~88 144 Windscale under scrutiny 147 The worst nuclear accident in the world, 1986 151 Final words on the health impact? 152 10 Postscript 154 The end of an era 154 The Windscale piles: present and future 159 Contents Vll Appendices 161 Note on Sources 205 Notes and Riferences 208 Bibliography 225 Index 231 List of Appendices I Chronology of events, October 195 7-0ctober 1958 161 II Responsibilities and organisation of the IG 164 III Instruction of 14 November 1955 on Wigner releases 167 IV Summary of Wigner releases in Windscale piles, 1953-5 7 168 v Note on uranium fuel cartridges in the Windscale piles 169 VI Note on other cartridges in the Windscale piles 172 VII Emergency site procedure at Windscale 175 VIII Calculations of emergency levels for iodine-131 178 IX Estimates of fission product and other radioactive releases resulting from the 1957 fire in Windscale Pile No.1 184 X Estimates of total radiological impact of the radioactive releases resulting from the 1957 fire in Windsca1e Pile No.1 187 XI Report of Penney Inquiry 189 Vlll Foreword Lest we forget is the historian's motivator and justification; to capture the facts and record them coherently and fairly before they escape the grasp of fading memories and perishable docu­ ments, or are supplanted by myth and wishful fiction. In the historian's traditional theatres - politics, military struggle, national leadership, imperialism, social evolution, ecclesiastical power - there is no shortage of researchers, interpreters, presenters and commentators. But the twentieth century has seen the rise of other great human activities, notably in science and technology, and the historians of these are still rare; a handful of pioneers struggling to ensure that these new branches of history do not suffer such nebulous and fabulous beginnings as the classical ones. That is why we must be grateful to Lorna Arnold and her colleagues, pre-eminently Margaret Gowing, who are endeav­ ouring to capture our fading technological history. The Windscale accident of 1957 is the equivalent of a wartime battle. All the same basic elements are there: misjudgements, professional rivalries, brilliant improvisation, desperate de­ cisions and heroic actions, all wrapped in a cloud of uncertainty as dense as any fog of war. As a beautiful account of epic endeavour, exposing human character in all its complexity as realistically as in any battle, Lorna Arnold's story grips the reader by its sheer fascination; a true adventure, expertly told by a professional historian. SIR ALAN COTTRELL ix Note on Documentation In accordance with the practice of official histories com­ missioned by the Cabinet Office, references to official papers that are not yet publicly available have been omitted; notes are confined to published material or documents in the Public Record Office. The author and publishers are grateful to the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office for permission to reproduce and quote Government documents. She also acknowledges her in­ debtedness to the authors and publishers of all those books that have been mentioned in this work. X List of Abbreviations AEA Atomic Energy Authority. Used to refer to the AEA Board, or the whole organisation (see also UKAEA) AERE Atomic Energy Research Establishment (Harwell) AEX Atomic Energy Executive (consisting of the full-time AEA Board Members) AGR Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor AHSB Authority Health and Safety Branch AM Code-name for tritium, hence applied to the cartridges containing rods of lithium-magnesium (Li-Mg) alloy irradiated in the piles to produce tritium ARC Agricultural Research Council AWRE Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (Aldermaston); transferred from the AEA to the Ministry of Defence in 1973, now A WE BCDG Burst Cartridge Detection Gear, used to detect and locate faulty fuel elements in the piles so that they could be discharged before causing trouble BEPO Experimental low power, air-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor at Harwell, commissioned in 1948 BNFL British Nuclear Fuels Limited, created in 1971 by hiving off the Production Group from the AEA (now British Nuclear Fuels plc) CEA Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (France) CEA Central Electricity Authority (the predecessor of the CEGB) CEGB Central Electricity Generating Board, set up in 1957 CO MARE Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment CSAR Chief Superintendent of Armament Research Xl Xll List of Abbreviations DFR Dounreay Fast Reactor, a 60 megawatt experimental reactor at Dounreay, in the north of Scotland; commissioned in 1959 ENEA European Nuclear Energy Agency GLEEP Low energy research reactor, air-cooled and graphite-moderated, at Harwell; commissioned in 1947 IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ICI Imperial Chemical Industries ICRP International Commission on Radiological Protection IG The Industrial Group of the AEA, with headquarters at Risley, near Warrington, Lancashire (now Cheshire) IGY International Geophysical Year IPCS Institution of Professional Civil Servants LM Code-name for polonium-210; also applied to the cartridges containing bismuth oxide which were irradiated in the piles to produce polonium-210 MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food MHLG Ministry of Housing and Local Government MRC Medical Research Council NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nil Nuclear Installations Inspectorate NRPB National Radiological Protection Board PEC Production Executive Committee PERG Political Ecology Research Group PIPPA A type of dual-purpose, gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor, designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium with electricity as a by-product PIRC MRC Committee on Protection against Ionising Radiations PRO Public Record Office QFE Quartz fibre electrometer R&D Research and development R& DB Research and Development Branch (Industrial Group) R & DB (W) Research and Development Branch, Windscale List of Abbreviations xiii RPD Radiological Protection Division of the Authority Health and Safety Branch, located at Harwell SRD Safety and Reliability Directorate su Sunshine units (used for strontium-90) TEC Technical Evaluation Committee (the Fleck Committee) TX Technical Executive Committee, set up by the AEA's Industrial Group immediately after the 1957 Windsca1e accident UKAEA United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, set up in 1954 (see also AEA) UNSCEAR United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation USAEC United States Atomic Energy Commission (1946-74) Glossary Alpha radiation See Ionising radiation. Atomic bomb (A-bomb) Bomb in which the explosive power is derived from the fission of plutonium or uranium-235. Becquerel (Bq) A measure of radioactivity, equivalent to the activity of a radionuclide that decays at the rate of one nuclear disintegration per second (I d.p.s.). It is named after Henri Becquerel who discovered the radioactivity of uranium.
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