Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Plainly Difficult 'Brief History of the Windscale Fire'

[Ralph-yngr]

From what I understand, there was no specialized fire suppression system at Windscale. The plan was "don't let the graphite catch fire in the first place."

[kimchi]

Plainly Difficult has been one of my favorite channels for a long time.

[eFeXuy]

You cannot lose coolant if you don't have coolant.

[nightwtchman]

2:20 So my mother lived near Windscale back then and told me what happened to her. In short her memory was just that they didn't get milk in primary school that day or a bit afterwards.
She's now nearly in her 70's and not experienced any major problems related to the accident.

[theheresiarch]

Have you seen the USCSB (US Chemical Safety Board) channel? They do extremely detailed breakdowns of major chemical industrial accidents and make forensic animations explaining what went wrong. I feel like it's right up your alley.

[TehSmokeyMan]

Too bad that PD left out the decision that caused it all: They were ordered to trim back the cooling fins of the cartridges in order to speed up production [of weapons-grade uranium] for the nucler weapons program. Windscale was marketed as a power plant, but let's not forget that it was a MoD site built to enrich uranium.

[laurdy]

The UK's last MAGNOX was only shut down in 2015, The main problem they had was that the fuel cladding reacts with water in the cooling ponds so it couldn't be left to cool as long. We do still have some graphite moderated, CO2 gas cooled reactors running however.

[FerrowTheFox]

I knew this was gonna be a good one. Being familiar with Windscale, I knew you'd be cringing a lot. It really was one of the most ridiculous reactor designs ever, as if the engineers were just like "what could possibly go wrong?"

[TheCatherineCC]

As part of Windscale's normal operation, they pushed the fuel assemblies out the back into the pool, but not all of the assemblies actually made it into the pool. Some assemblies got stuck on a "shelf" and just sat there for months with no cooling. Some assemblies were damaged when hitting the shelf.
The assemblies were serialized but missing fuel assemblies were not seen as a problem.

[swokatsamsiyu]

Yes, he's done another Plainly Difficult video. Excellent! I swear I could see your brain doing triple backflips when listening to Plainly's video on how they tried to extinguish the fire. And then the one guy climbing up the chimney to look straight into the reactor core😱 Today, that would not be even almost allowed, let alone implemented.

As an aswer to your question if the Windscale Piles were a worse design than Chernobyl; I'm on the fence about it. They certainly were much more primitive than the RBMK. However, like you already said, they weren't nearly as powerful, and didn't have the high pressure. These reactors were never meant to be a power producing reactor, just a plutonium breeder. So, they weren't the high-power rigs the RBMKs are. At that time, the RBMK was the most powerful reactor in the world, with the Ignalina twins coming in at a whopping 1500 MWe (and around 4850 MWt) a piece. Even today these would be considered very large and powerful reactors.
And even at the time in the 70s/80s, the RBMK would not be approved anywhere outside the USSR for obvious reasons. The not-having-a-contaiment alone was a complete non-starter for any country outside the USSR realm. Finland was a prospect buyer for a pair of Soviet VVERs (the Soviet equivalent to an American PWR) back then, and said if these would not come with a full containment building, they would not allow them to be built on their territory.

[HT-ioeg]

I’m really glad you did this one. Windscale/Seascale was major news in the UK. The stone age technology and ridiculous mismanagement at this plant were major factors in the anti-nuclear movement at the time. I was 11/12 when 3 mile island happened and it scared the sh1t out of everyone at school. Given Windscale’s primary purpose was weapons material production everyone was anti nuclear power, nuclear weapons.

[seanspartan]

The fact they had to improvise tools to pull out the burning cartridges baffles me. What was their contingency plan if a cartridge got caught in the tube because fire / heat melted it?

Plus, you'd think they would have had some boron and sand in supply to stop a fire / reactivity... or kitty litter at least?
(/sarcasm)

[lexinexi-hjzo]

15:00 "Which type of control rods they had?" They had NONE! The reaction was slowed down by pushing manually the cartridges out the back. Nothing was automated nor was safety built into negative feed back geometry as the temp began to rise. Graphite moderated air cooled: never safe but would only work in a very small reactor, which would be too small to get critical.

[thetowndrunk]

“Let’s not change the design flaw of the pool. Let’s instead add a filter. It’ll be alright”……the past.

[ShadowDragon]

To explain the 'funny making convention' of 'Cockcroft's Folly, ' in the Victorian era, it came _en vogue_ for very wealthy people to commission the construction of architectural structures with little _or zero_ practical use; think a tower that looks a little like a hybrid between a castle and a lighthouse, but with an entrance that requires a team of workmen with hammers to physically remove the masonry to get inside. Such structures were expensive to build, had ongoing maintenance costs, and had no purpose but to look nice; to build one was as much of a folly as to build a ship which weighs more than it displaces, thus sinking immediately upon launch. So by naming it a Folly, they were saying that he was forcing the Government to spend money on something unnecessary.

Spoiler alert: safety measures are _never_ an unnecessary expense.

[jenniferklayer]

Air as a coolant? I BEG YOUR PARDON?! 🥴

[andrewsimms]

Im a big Plainly Difficult fan. He is very good at simply explaining very complicated scientific disasters to a Luddite like myself. It's also great to get some more in depth expert opinion on these events. Thanks Tyler!

May I suggest Plainly Difficults Demon Core video for a future episode. Even with my fairly scientifically ignorant brain, I can't help but think "WTF were they thinking!"

[lucyanderson]

One happens to live relatively close to the modern day Sellafield site, and it really is a contrast from the surrounding countryside when going by on the train. Alot of the Windscale buildings still survive, although demolition of the iconic chimney from pile one occured a few years ago.

[anderswegge]

The reason it was so shoddy designed was a desperate need for UK to enter the big boys nuclear club, so the scientists was ordered, in rough terms, to maximzie plutonium output while minimizing build time. Cockcroft is an unrecognized hero, that saved North West Europe from a fate much worse than Chernobyl.

[davidjh]

Thank you so much for reacting to this video. I was really looking forward to your comments on this nearly forgotten, but major reactor event. The design of Windscale was very similar to the B reactor at Hanford, except air cooled instead of water cooled. I wonder if Cockcroft made a point of rubbing his haters noses in their criticism after the event.. Funny how often someone pushing for something that the money people resent has saved the day later.