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 :

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?

"240 cancer deaths"

Hi all,

The claim that there were "240 cancer deaths" is made frequently in the media, but I can't seem to track down the paper it is from. The Irish Times attributes it to [a] study by visiting Professor at the University of Manchester's Dalton Nuclear Institute, Richard Wakeford and by former UK Atomic Energy Authority researcher, John Garland, is published in the current edition of Atmospheric Environment. This seems to be this study but it doesn't mention cancer at all let alone attribute an additional number of deaths to it.

An article in the BBC uses the 240 number but says it is total cancer cases and only around half of them were fatal.

This paper came out around the right time, but only quotes Clark giving a figure of 100 deaths and 90 non-fatal cancers.

Keele repeats the statement on their blog, this time attributing it to Steve Jones. “Health Effects of the Windscale Pile Fire.” Journal of radiological protection 36, no. 4. (2016). p.24 which I think is this study which seems to conclude that there were no cancer deaths (at least no thyroid cancer deaths) attributable to the Windscale fire.

Another study by Wakeford finds no increase in thyroid cancer deaths.

The 240 number can't have been made up by the press to sell papers, can it? ~ El D. (talk to me) 21:50, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

There seems to have been no reply or additional sources to substantiate this claim in the last 4 months. I have been unable to find any epidemiological studies that give an answer above 0 for cancer fatalities, though as mentioned above modelling suggests that this is incorrect. I have dug into this subject in any great depth but really these figures should be based on scientific studies as opposed to the popular press.

Best wishes, ~ El D. (talk to me) 16:56, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I did a 'deep dive' into this (as best as one who isn't terribly versed in the language of published study data can do), and found a much more recent study of the matter. One of the authors from that original study was an author on this newer study (Wakeford).

Reading the 'Conclusions', it seems they've found no increased incidence of thyroid cancers in those in the exposure area, and no mention of increased deaths. I could be wrong in my interpretation. https://rdcu.be/eSn9s

This seems to invalidate the speculative conclusions of excess deaths in earlier studies. However, this is also a primary source, so I'm not sure whether it would be an acceptable citation within the article. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:06, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Since the recent epidemiological studies show no increase in thyroid cancer, I decided to look into other cancers. There was an elevated number of childhood leukemia and lymphoma cases reported in Seascale in the 1980s. The British government Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) has written several reports on it which concluded that although the number is statistically significant, it's probably not caused radiological release from Sellafield. The parts of Cumbria closer to Sellafield did not have elevated rates of childhood cancer.

Quote from the COMARE 2016 report:

"Overall, 21 cases were identified of diagnoses of, or deaths from, cancer during 1950–2001 among young people of 0–24 years of age who were either resident in Seascale at diagnosis or death, or were born in the village. Of these, 14 were of leukaemia or NHL; ten cases were in the 0–14 year age group, six of whom were in the 1–4 year age group. There was a clear excess of cases of cancer among young people who had been resident for some period in Seascale, and this excess was most marked for cases of leukaemia and NHL in young children." (p. 28-29)

The COMARE report also finds no significant evidence of increased rates of other cancers caused by Windscale. Even if Seascale's cancer cluster is the result of the Windscale fire, it's only 10-20 extra cases of cancer not 100-240. Wanderingspark (talk) 07:39, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

I actually emailed Richard Wakeford about the 240 cases of cancer number. He confirmed that it's a misattribution. The closest he has ever come to publishing such a claim is citing Roger Clarke's estimate (100 deaths and 90 non-fatal cancers). It's possible someone else calculated that 240 cases number based on the data published in Garland and Wakeford 2007.

Wakeford is not a fan of predicting the number of cancer cases on the basis of collective radiation doses, because the assumptions used to make these calculations may overestimate the risk of cancer. Recent epidemiological studies show that the actual cancer impact of Windscale is much smaller than predicted by the collective dose estimates.

Since we can't find a clear origin for the 240 cases number, and the more recent epidemiological studies contradict it, I suggest we remove it from from this and all other Wikipedia articles that talk about Windscale. Wanderingspark (talk) 00:59, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Tuohy not recognized

This article cites Tuohy's obituary in The Independent as saying he never received any recognition for his actions during the fire. However, the page for him personally points out he was made CBE in 1969 for his work in the British atomic energy industry, and gives a direct link to the Gazette listing of it. The Independent obituary seems to have completely missed this, and was interpreted in this article as him never being recognized. The obituary actually doesn't say he wasn't recognized, but it doesn't mention his CBE either. There needs to be a decision on this. Dave.a.hunt (talk) 02:26, 19 April 2026 (UTC)