The Windscale Incident

Between the 7th and 11th October 1957, an accident occurred in one of the UK's first experimental nucelar reactors, Windscale Pile number 1. The accident lead to a fire, which ultimately rendered the reactor unusable, and led to its being shut down.

Between the 17th and 25th October 1957 a Board of Enquiry met under the chairmanship of Sir William Penney, to determine the cause of the accident. During this enquiry, a large number of nuclear physicists, engineers and plant workers were interviewed. Their oral evidence is recorded in a transcript that runs to 234 pages. From the evidence so gathered, the board produced a report which was submitted to the chairman of the United Kingdon Atomic Energy Authority, and this report then formed the basis of the Government White Paper submitted to Parliament in November 1957. The transcripts of the evidence, and the report itself, however, remained classified for over thirty years, with the report being declassified only in 1988 and the transcripts later still.

In this literature review it is suggested that the student should consider himself in the role of Sir William Penney as chair of the Board of Enquiry, and should produce a report of his/her own based on the oral evidence submitted to the board. The report should bring out all the interesting and relevant areas of physics which came up within the evidence, review the competing physical hypotheses for the causes of the thermal runaway, and should form his her own conclusions on the basis of that evidence. The resultant report should explain all the relevant physics at a level at which another Part II student (not doing this review) could understand.

References

05_10_07_ukaea.pdf