Windscale: Britain's Biggest Nuclear Disaster - Part 01

On the night of 10 October 1957 a fire broke out in Pile Number one at Windscale. The reactor had been loaded beyond its original design limit in order to provide materials for Britain's nuclear weapons programme.
Nuclear fuel cartridges caught fire, releasing contaminants into the atmosphere via the reactors air cooling system. As fire ripped through the pile, the staff at Windscale struggled to find a way to extinguish it and avert disaster, a situation no-one had ever faced before.

Windscale: Britain's biggest nuclear disaster was broadcast on Monday, 8 October, 2007, at 2100 BST on BBC Two. VHS Recording.

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Science & Technology

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• Windscale
• Britain's
• Biggest
• Nuclear
• Disaster
• BBC
• Sellafield

[MegaGloton]

+5: Thank you very much for uploading.

Incredible, that Sellafield still works. Incredible, that we Germans still send Uranium to Sellafield, incredible, that we call GB and Germany a democracy.

Shame on politicians, they all seem to be prostitudes of the energyproducers

[shevegen]

@archykins Not every country can use hydro.

But I agree with you that nuclear energy is HEAVILY overused. This is done strategically - the industry recieves a lot of money from taxpayers. It is a huge cashcow. People will be angry if you try to go away from nuclear energy.

That is why politicans are bought.

[HRHooChicken]

@shevegen Nuclear energy is underused! We need more reactors

[spiffcorgi]

Read through all the comments now and it seems it's just a couple of completely idiotic comments that have somehow been thumbed up to the top comments. There are some people here, like me, who have an actual understanding of how energy works and don't just think nuclear power is like the power plant where Homer Simpson works.

[spiffcorgi]

Sad to see so many ignorant comments about how "awful" nuclear power is. There have been a few really bad nuclear disasters, but nothing compared to the hundreds of oil spills and coal mine cave-ins every year, and it is a simple fact that a government in this economy has no hope of relying simply on renewables. Nuclear power produces no carbon dioxide, making it advantageous over coal whilst producing enough energy to sustain a country. Don't be dingbats.

[afansi]

On my friend's 18th birthday during the summer of 1983 we went swimming in the Solway Firth. The next day men in astronaut suits were shown on TV removing contaminated debris from the same beach from where we swam. The same day, my uncle, who was a doctor in Seascale broke down in tears on local TV lamenting the devastation nuclear contamination had caused to the health of his patients.

[MrLankanlion]

@LukeNAESA10

i'm not a US citizen n i'm an asian. i'm not the lawyer of US. just that people should not misunderstand history.

[LukeNAESA10]

@MrLankanlion Yeah we don't need nuclear, we have the SAS. They could slit your best trained soldiers throats in seconds without even hearing them.

[MrLankanlion]

@LukeNAESA10

DO U KNOW,nuclear bomb was created in manhatton project in US n britian used called war n begged for the know how of how to make it work?

btw, us britain a super power today?lol

[LukeNAESA10]

@MrLankanlion Considering we had the first nuclear power plant to provide power in commercial quantities, we prefer to use nuclear as a safe option rather than the typical American trigger happy option, ie. Silly nuclear bombs.

[MrLankanlion]

@LukeNAESA10

american super power, the most powerful country in the world from which Britain begged for atomic bomb

[LukeNAESA10]

@MrLankanlion There's no such thing as American power, you're all enemies with yourself.