Talk:Windscale fire

Tuohy

He recently died in Australia where he had emigrated - see reference 3 to The Independent's recent obituary. Government probabaly waited till he was out of the way before they sanctioned release of the docs.

Although "The Government" might well have had such devious motives, Tuohy had never been an establishment figure and thus never posed a serious threat or embarrassment. He died (in Newcastle, New South Wales), however, not until 12 March 2008, while the release of the official documents had aleady been timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the fire in October 2007. I'm not sure that any amount of official publication would have made much difference to Tuohy himself, who always knew what really happended and who had never made any fuss over being such an unsung hero. Martinevans123 (talk)

Still hot

I did not in fact make up the idea that it could still be hot. From [1]:

Yet even today as the fateful chimneys are slowly taken down by shielded robots the centre of the fire crippled reactor of Pile one still contains molten uranium and still gives off a gentle heat. There is still unreleased Wigner energy in the graphite and water hoses are still left connected to the charge face as a final safety precaution.

How hot, I have no idea. But the fuel feeding system certainly didn't survive, so there's no way to get anything out, so the core is still there... --Andrew 05:51, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Good article, but certainly there are no "continuing chain reactions". Molten is ambiguous but implies that the uranium is still liquid. I changed it to melted. pstudier 06:15, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

You're probably right about the continuing chain reactions (except in the trivial sense that there will always be a few chain reactions even in a subcritical mass) but I'm not sur why you disagree with the article on whether the uranium is still liquid. Do you have a reference? We could use some more good ones. --Andrew 18:36, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Typical LWR fuel is stored underwater for a minimum of about 5 years. It then can placed in dry storage, where the fuel is sealed in a metal can a couple inches thick. This is then cooled by air convection, and if I recall correctly, maximum temperatures are a couple hundred degrees C. The Windscale reactor used unenriched uranium, so it was more dilute, and was not cooked as long in order to have higher quality plutonium. Therefore, the fuel is less hot than typical LWR fuel. It is not credible to me that there is enough heat to keep it molten at over 1000 C. Even if it was, it would probably would dissolve the ground underneath it until it was dilute enough to solidify.

The Canadian Nuclear FAQ discusses CANDU waste. The fuel bundles weigh 20Kg, and it states "The average heat generation of a fuel bundle at this point (one year) is about 100 W". This is also unenriched fuel, but it is cooked longer than for a plutonium reactor. It is also 1 year old instead of 48 years old. It is not credible that the uranium is still liquid.

To beat a dead horse into hamburger, I sure would not want to share a hot tub with anyone who described molten uranium as "still gives off a gentle heat".  :-) pstudier 20:14, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

You're probably right that it's not too hot, but figures about spent fuel are not terribly convincing, since they're separated pieces, each well below critical. In the core of the Windscale reactor, there's a mass of fuel, a moderator, and possibly still enough for criticality. I doubt, as you do, that it's still critical (uncontrolled, you'd almost certainly get exponential growth, which would be, well, noticeable) but fission cascades can still occur and so it might produce more heat than carefully isolated spent fuel rods. Moreover, if the waste canisters hit a temperature of several hundred degrees in dry storage, then it's not outrageous (but unlikely) that a large pile of uranium and graphite, designed to lose heat by forced-air cooling but shut off from the atmosphere, could get as hot as 1000C somewhere deep in the center. The graphite (or concrete) could keep it from melting out the bottom.

Anyway, further reading (all I have time for tonight) fails to clear up the state of the reactor core, but I added a bunch to the description of the accident itself. --Andrew 06:12, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and the UKAEA is worried enough about the pile bursting into flame to want to put an argon atmosphere over it while decommissioning it. I don't know how hot it'd have to be for that to happen, but presumably hotter than the pile's design temperature... --Andrew 06:32, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Meltdown

Was there a core meltdown during the Windscale fire? Should it be listed in the nuclear meltdown page?

I think the answer is yes to both, but the question was raised at Talk:nuclear meltdown, and I realize this article doesn't say one way or the other.

It's certainly the case that whether the core melted is not very relevant; the problem was the fire. --Andrew 22:37, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

The following page may be useful (it claims there was a partial meltdown): Partial Fuel Meltdown Events --Andrew 22:42, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Costs

What are the costs till now of this catastrophe?