There’s something so quintessentially British about the person saying, “I climbed down to examine the nuclear pile, and while there were no flames yet, it *was* glowing red.” I would have just been quietly saying my prayers, “flame” and “nuclear pile” are two things you never want in the same sentence, much less the same location.
Any decent nuclear power follower knows about the Windscale accident and all others. Considering how many reactors years we accumulated with inferior technology compared to what is used today, civilian nuclear production had very few accidents, with way less fatalities or long term health consequences than any other form of producing electricity on such scale.
Not an atomic explosion, but the equal of a "dirty bomb" in the spread of radioactive pollution. The reactor could explode, but it would most likely be a hydrogen explosion, caused by cooling water, or a hot air explosion caused by rapid heating.
Yes actually, a nuclear detonation, a la SL-1, KIWI-TNT, and Chernobyl, plus many of the small test reactors in Idaho. Not mushroom cloud class nuclear detonations, but nuclear detonations none the less - made worse by occurring in the core of an operating reactor with a large fission inventory. In the case of the Hanford reactors, an accident would have been horrific. The reactors were run on the ragged edge to maximize plutonium production. The temperature in the room pressure core channels exceeded boiling in the back center of the cores resulting in two-phase flow. This reduced heat transfer and increased fuel temperature resulting in 1,962 fuel slug failures. The "coolant" laced with hexavalent chromium (to minimize fuel and channel corrosion) entered the bottom of the Columbia at 195-212F. Do you like your salmon boiled? The radioactivity in the river in the mid 1960s exceeded the then safety standard for people in Pasco, Washington - at 114% of the 1960s limit for intestinal radiation dose. This resulted in the Bi-State Water Quality Control Commission considering the shutting down of all fishing in the River. That potential action resulted in a year long shutdown of the reactors at Hanford, and changes in operations. DOE recognized how damaging the shutdown of fishing would be on Hanford. Also little known: The Hanford reactors were used both to produce highly fissile Uranium-233 by bombardment of Thorium-232, adding greatly to the reactivity in the cores. In total the Hanford reactors produced over a metric ton of U-233 fir weapons use. The Savannah River Site Reactors did the same fir a tital production if two metric tons of U-233. The Hanford reactors suffered severe distortion of the graphite and channels due to Wigner energy storage and graphite lattice distortion. They two underwent heating to release the stored Wigner energy.
@@tunneloflight There is a term for this: "nuclear excursion". Calling it a "nuclear detonation" or "atomic bomb" is misleading, IMO. In the video, they were clearly implying that there could have been a mushroom cloud over Windscale, but that was not actually true.
@@cpm1003 No, it isn't a "bomb". It isn't 'droppable' or 'delivereable'. But neither is it simply an "excursion". When prompt criticality destroys the reactor it is by definition a nuclear detonation.
@@cpm1003 Calling it a "nuclear excursion" is about like talking about someone driving a car on the freeway and saying they 'left the paved road' while omitting that they exceeded any speed the car could possibly do, went for a short trip cross country, then sailed off the rim of the Grand Canyon, gaining significant air time and impacted the bottom far wall of the canyon at a high mach number, leaving only a stain and debris. Though "bomb" is incorrect technically. And though it wouldn't produce a classic "mushroom cloud", as Chernobyl showed, it would produce a smaller version of the same with far more terrible consequences.
My daughter is 22 and works at an electrical engineering firm and was doing a job shadow day with kids from a local high-school and only 5 kids out of 50 had heard of the chernobyl accident
I'll bet if you looked for a photo taken during that same time period, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who DOESN'T have a cigarette hanging out of their mouth!
It probably did not help that plant operators kept increasing the intervals between those periodic annealings. At first, they were done every 20 GWhr, but that was later increased to 30 and then to 40 GWhr. With each annealing, the process was harder to imagine and required ever hotter reactor temperatures.
12:35 …. That’s how the chernobil accident happened . The scientist explained very well the little known at the time instability of graphite moderated reactors when not properly operated.
Would love to know the original airdate of these shows. Even if it is put in the video description. Because as interesting as they are, some of them contain information that might be obsolete, or considered correct at the time, but later research has improved upon.
An overheated reactor does not make an atomic bomb. It can melt the fuel, it can turn water in to steam rapidly. If the steam pressure is not released fast enough, the steam can rapidly disassemble the vessel that contains it ( think Chernobyl ). Also the hazards present at Hanford were not due to the water cooling. The graphite moderator used set up a positive coefficient of reactivity. The same fault existed at wind scale.
Nobody. The entire thing was covered up by the british government. On my car country, the brits have the ability to stop information from going out in the news. They do not have free speech to the same degree that we have in this country. In britain, the government can put a gag order on honest situation.
You can get a hydrogen and steam explosion in a nuclear reactor. But not a nuclear explosion. A steam hydrogen detonation is what occurred at chernobyl. This would spread a lot of radioactive material over a sizable area. The density of the fuel in a nuclear reactor is too low for it to go critical and detonate.
What the documentary fails to mention at all was Windscale’s proximity to Ireland an independent nation who’s eastern coast suffered clusters of cancers that were attributable to the accident- but when the British (really the English) ever worry about the damage they caused to another nation?
The wind was blowing away from Ireland during the c. 24 hours of the accident and radiation release, so very little of the released radiation reached Ireland. Also, if Ireland was contaminated, the hazard would have involved radioactive Iodine accumulating in the thyroids of children, causing thyroid cancer, as with Chernobyl. No elevation in thyroid cancer or other cancers were seen in Ireland. Also, thyroid cancer in highly curable, >98.5% are cured. In regard to Chernobyl, there were 1,152 cases of thyroid cancer, and 14 deaths between 1986-2002 in Belarus for example, a remission rate of 98.8%. Also, the amount of radioactive iodine released by the Windscale fire was minute compared to Chernobyl. The Windscale fire released ~1,800 TeraBecquerel of 131I, Chernobyl released 978 times more, ~ 1,760,000 TeraBecquerel. If this ratio is correct, it suggests that Windscale may have caused a few cases of thyroid cancer in children. However, unlike the Soviets, who covered up the Chernobyl accident for several days and allowed children to drink contaminated milk, the UK immediately dumped milk and did not allow children to drink it. "The survival rate has been 98.8% for the 1152 cases of thyroid cancer diagnosed among Chernobyl children in Belarus during 1986-2002." The following paper, includes a map of radioactive contaminations, illustrating the wind was blowing to the south-east. Garland, J.A. and Wakeford, R., 2007. Atmospheric emissions from the Windscale accident of October 1957. Atmospheric Environment, 41(18), pp.3904-3920.
Womp womp. Also, no. Winds were blowing away from Ireland. Correlation does not equal causation. Ans that's if you are actually correct and that there were higher cancer rates at all.
@@DiamonddavejYou do know they use Radioactive iodine to cure thyroid cancer. I know because I spent five days locked in a hospital room after swallowing Radioactive iodine to stop my thyroid cancer from spreading and killing the cancer.
there were many before that... there was once a whole series called "Beria - the original Dyatlov" dealing with all the accidents on USSR's way to the nuclear Bomb
First? Maybe publicly, the 1952 NRX accident in Canada was five years earlier and who knows what hasn't been open to the public globally. Edit: If the Americans only kept their word on the Quebec Agreement the Windscale issue woud have been less likely.
Dec 1952, an experimental nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario: Search on "How a future president Jimmy Carter helped avert a nuclear disaster near Canada's capital"
It's strange that we tend to worry more about nuclear disasters, which are theoretically preventable, than natural disasters that are completely beyond our control. Maybe because how we all know how human nature goes...
Ah, human nature. After the Mayak disaster in the USSR, people were told not to fish from the Techa river, but not told why (internal secrecy) so they fished there anyway. Here in the US, it's the other way around - you can tell people why they shouldn't be consuming contaminated stuff, but nevertheless some of those people will tell you it's a conspiracy to take away their freedoms, or it's elitist scientists trying to take over.
exactly. we are already vanishing because of the climate change. scientists are optimistic, while in reality, every summer is hotter and hotter. this july 2024, it was 52 degrees celsius (125.6 F) in my hometown in Serbia. imagine that temperature in that part of Europe. in the 90's the hottest day oof the year would be like 32,33 C.
Humanity feels solidarity with one another when nature attacks- the best of us. Nuclear weapons are always humanity attacking itself - the worst of us.
I’ve read about possibly every documented radiological incident ever, Sellafield is far from obscure. That “you’ve never heard of” clickbait title is a sad tease :{ Great doc though!
December 1952, an experimental nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. How a future president Jimmy Carter helped avert a nuclear disaster near Canada's capital
Japan did not end the war immediately after the dropping of the two atomic bombs.It was very clear the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, and The Kuril Islands was what forced the Japanese surrender. The Japanese understood that the Soviets were out for blood and they were terrified of the threat to the 4 main islands by the Russians. It's very inaccurate to state that the atomic bombs was the sole reason for the surrender. In fact it's been documented that the government and military was not overly concerned about the atomic weapons.
Revisionist "history" at its worst. The "Japs" didn't surrender. Emperor Hirohito made the decision, overriding the dead-locked War Counsel. Perhaps if you bothered to study the era instead of relying on headlines, you would know better
The surrender of Japan was not "immediate", it took 6 days. After the bomb on Nagasaki August 9th the Soviet Union attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria and the surrender was announced on August 15th by Hirohito. If the Soviets did not attack it is theorized that Japan might not have surrendered. And, as commented below, if the water cooling system failed it would become a melt down NOT a bomb.
@@sharon4364 Not letting me link with a hot URL. Title " Our reactor is on fire" running time 47 min. Scientist finding particle at about 7 minutes in . Put up by ZilogBob 1.83Kubscribers
Very interesting and well compiled documentary. Just two small things 1. This occurrence certainly wasn't a secret, so there's no reason why people should never have heard of it (at least informed and educated people have heard of it). 2. The world is using metric measurements now so perhaps we should retire the Imperial measurements for international content.
You have to be f**king kidding me. You've never heard of? This is common knowledge to most people. I love these videos they're " Informing us!" You could find this in an old encyclopedia if you took the time to look. Next, it's we found out who bombed Dresden!
"it would be impossible to shut down the reactor before a nuclear explosion" and right there you made it abundantly clear that you don't have the first clue what you are talking about. Thumbs down, added to "do not recommend channel" list.
the risk of an aggression of the USSR at this time (and later on until today) was neclectable, because the USSR was extremely weekend by Germany in WWII and the ruling class in UK know it
in July 1959, the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in California experienced a partial nuclear meltdown.... The Atomic Energy Commission kept the meltdown a secret from the public until 1979.......
Gosh,where to start on this pile of rubbish. First, the sources of the US's fissile material (do you even know the difference between fissile vs fissionable?) The first facility to produce gram quantities of fissile material was the carbon pile at oak ridge. Then came Hanford I, then the Oak Ridge Calutron. Then came the additional Hanford pile and the unimaginably huge gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge. Second lie: A nuclear reactor, regardless of the size or design can undergo a nuclear explosion. Things simply can't happen rapidly enough, Anyone who has had a year of physics would know that. third lie: Quoting casualties out of context. Let's compare casualties from major events during WWII: 20,000,000 estimated total Soviet casualties during hitler's winter disaster. 80-100,000 The conventional firebombing of Dresden 34,000- 48,000 Conventional firebombing of Hamburg. 80-100,000 Conventional firebombing of Tokyo 80,0000 Hiroshima 49,000 Nagasaki To put that into further comparison, consider that the US alone suffered approx 1,500,000 KIA in WWII. So in the big picture, the 2 well-deserved nukings were pocket change in the total casualty accounting. What they DID do was to deliver enough shock and awe, particularly the Emperor, to get an unconditional surrender. Even after Nagasaki, the jap war council was deadlocked about whether to keep fighting or surrender. The deadlock was broken when Emperor Hirohito spoke directly to the jap people for the first time in history and told them that japan would surrender. But Let's consider what would have happened had they chosen to continue fighting. People who know just enough to be dangerous whine about how many casualties the Allies would suffer in an invasion. An invasion was not going to happen, Gen LeMay had developed an operation to burn the island with with conventional incendiaries - if the third nuke, which was within a few days of shipping to the Pacific, didn't do it. Then he tells the same lie about the Hanford site having a nuclear explosion if it overheated. The US engineers got it right the first time through outstanding conventional engineering. The first time I read the then-classified report, my thought was "How could they be so stoopid, to wit: * Designing a high powered graphite reactor cooled with air. Once heated to ts kindling temperature, graphite burns easily in air. That Biggie should have killed the idea in the first place. The almost complete misunderstanding of the chemistry was demonstrated by their failed attempt to build a CO2-cooled graphite pile. When CO2 is flowed over hot graphite, the following chemical reaction happens. CO2 + C --> 2CO. In other words, a hot graphite atom reacts with a CO2 molecule to form 2 carbon monoxide molecules. OF COURSE the graphite "eroded". OF COURSE large quantities of a poison gas are produced, * probably the worst mistake was using metallic Uranium metal with a melting point of only 2075°F. The US uses Uranium dioxide with a melting point of 5140F. Even at the little incident at TMI2 (I worked there as as a nuclear engineering consultant for 4 years/), the center of the core got hot enough to burn off the Zircalloy paladin, the UO2 fuel pellets remained untouched. As far as his crap about external exposure goes, it is really crap. I had access to the actual contamination levels and saw nothing to get excited about except a few square yards of grass with uncomfortably high I-131 readings. With a half-life of only 5.25 days, that was gotten rid of by the passage of time. I saw no milk analysis that got me excited. If there had been, simply refrigerating the milk for a week or so would have fixed the problem. The dumping of milk down the drains was simply a publicity stunt. Yet another case of a kid trolling for clicks trying to talk about something of which he knows little to nothing. Thst's U-toob
I had heard of this Nuclear Catastrophe but this still was an enjoyable video. There is another documentary made by the BBC I think that is also quite enjoyable. I would like to state Thomas Tuohy is a bad ass and a Proper Gent. I would have been honored to buy him a pint but sadly he has left this world. I don't understand how he climbed up to check on that fire. Seems like his gigantic balls would have kept him from climbing the ladder.
The inhabitants of the Bikini atoll are pursuing compensation for continuing health effects after some 70 years. The concrete cap over the Bikini atoll explosion sight has deteriorated, developed cracks and its future integrity is uncertain.
@@RobertJarecki At this point the majority of the risk of being nearby is diminished. There is a direct inverse relationship between half-life and energy emission. The hottest of it is fading away and the longer isotopes will fade into background. This isn't to say "it's over", but one must understand that relationship to realize the actual effects.
to comment for C: you should know, that an atomic bomb is not only a thermonuclear bomb but also a nuclear ("dirty") bomb spreading nuclear materials over the world - as was the nuclear project of Germany in WWII
Anything ever used FOR people has to first be determined to not be usable as a weapon AGAINST people. What people? Well none as yet but they'll show themselves n well be ready!
No. Einstein thought of using said energy but once said jew passed the knowledge to muricans, they went straight to make a bomb so they could kill innocent people.
There's been a great deal of emphasis placed on the detonation of the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki being the key factor which convinced the Japanese to surrender to America. This is a gross overstatement. Strictly speaking, the atomic bombings did not impress the Japanese command staff overly much. They had seen countless cities and towns (including Tokyo) virtually bombed to ashes by conventional means since the American B-29s could get within range. From a purely tactical and operational standpoint, it didn't matter much if a city was incinerated by thousands of planes dropping tens of thousands of bombs, or one plane dropping one bomb. Granted, in those few days between the bombing and their surrender, they hadn't had time to absorb and process the full effects of the bombs (fallout, radiation sickness and poisoning, etc.). However, what convinced most of the Japanese that surrender to the Americans was the only viable option open was the declaration of war by the Soviets, and their invasion of Manchuria. They knew full well that having their nation cut in half between competing American and Soviet spheres of influence would be far worse for them than if they found themselves under sole American occupation. They also knew that Stalin had no problem sending millions of Soviet soldiers to die on Japanese soil the way that America would wince at such a prospect. Stalin would pour his men into the meatgrinder by the handful, never counting the cost. This was the calculation ultimately being made which brought the Japanese to their final surrender. They did not want to find themselves like Germany, being sliced down the middle by two allied superpowers that were destined to become belligerent adversaries. Better by far to just deal with one, rather than to be pulled apart like a toy being wrestled over by two angry children.
issn´t it customary anymore to at least show the names of the people you interview in documentaries? who are these people? one looks like paul krugman, but he´s an economist not sure about his credentials concerning the windscale incident but WTF? no sources no names just deal with it
I would suggest yes it was really that hot. These British Atomic Bomb tests were done at Pacific Islands to the North East of Australia and the Montebello Islands off the Northern Coast of Western Australia, both very tropical climate or near a place called Maralinga in the South Australian Desert, a very hot dry place during summer.
I think this was from the 80s or early 90s. I've seen a few videos on this topic. I really dislike that the original dates are not mentioned, along with original credits.
Most of the clips are from this documentary. ruclips.net/video/lOgSlFkv71U/видео.html&pp=ygUtd2luZHNjYWxlIGJyaXRhaW4ncyBiaWdnZXN0IG51Y2xlYXIgZGlzYXN0ZXIg
At 39:54 the narrator says " looking back from 4 decades on" so I would guess late 90s. The video uses a lot of old film footage which makes it look a lot older.
@@stevem.1853 it's a combination of different films... some of the more "artistic Noir footage" you see is from a film made by an organization that we now know to have been linked to the British communists... once the story became public they did a lot to try to so greater fear through such films... large chunks are from an early ITV documentary (1993 I think), but which also served as a basis for a later much longer documentary done by a Canadian group... they did many of the later interviews, and the documentary is somewhere out there on RUclips... I want to say it is part of Bad-Day_HQ but not sure
The British are the ones that gave them( the ideas. and the Know-how, ( not compelely) but because we owe them money. we had to capitulate. Real truth and I can prove it!
I remember the concern when I was a child. The huge upsurge in people being born North of Dublin with Down's Syndrome. Dublin to Dundalk. My parents' generation firmly believed it was due to this. I have worked with ppl in their 50's+ in Dublin who live with Down's Syndrome. Often wonder...
This is a myth. Downs syndrome is a condition caused by a duplication of Chromosome 13, it is not caused by ionizing radiation. The risk factor is giving birth at an older age, older mothers are far more likely to give birth to a child with Downs syndrome. Also, remember Ireland was very Catholic back in the day, we did not do birth control, so it was not uncommon for women to give birth in their 40s. My landlady in Athlone was 49 years old when she gave birth to her last son, her second youngest (a couple of years younger) had Downs Syndrome (she lived to 97, and last I heard the oulfella is still alive at 104). So this talk of Windscale causing clusters of Downs syndrome is likely a deflection, ignoring the Elephant in the Room, Catholic Ireland and older mothers giving birth, resulting in the highest rates of Downs Syndrome in the world at one time. Also, there's technical reasons why radiation cannot cause Downs syndrome: Ionizing radiation cannot duplicate a chromosome. A radioactive particle hits DNA, splitting it in half. This is called a DNA double strand break. There are DNA repair mechanisms that try to fix this damage, the repair mechanism evolved because radiation is natural, we need to repair low levels of radiation damage. That said, there are rare genetic illness where this repair mechanism is absent, e.g. Ataxia Telangiectatica. People with Ataxia Telangiectatica are highly sensitive to radiation, they cannot receive an X-ray, or they will develop cancer. This illustrates the fact healthy people repair most radiation damage. There's also experimental medications and a suggestion that increasing antioxidants, e.g. vitamin E, might help the repair process. This is an important topic of research, as it might increase people's ability to cope with high levels of radiation, that benefits e.g., cancer patients receiving radiotherapy and astronauts on Mars missions. However, even in normal people, sometimes the repair process goes wrong, splicing the wrong section of DNA, reversing chunks of DNA or there's a missing a chunk of DNA. If this damage affects the wrong part of DNA, it can cause cancer. (UV radiation, sun, causes single strand breaks)
Hah! Reading your headline, I was curious as to whether you were going to get into Sodom and Gomorrah or maybe Mohenjo Daro! This is interesting, though. As you say, I never heard of it.
The Japanese already surrendered when Stalins men marched on Manchuria and Russia declared war on Japan...the nuke was American noise and that noise continues in propaganda to this day.
And it's a good thing that nuclear weapons are not now under the control of a megalomaniac. Such a person might threaten to use nuclear weapons in a special military operation.
![Downwinders and the Radioactive West [FULL DOCUMENTARY]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/77gJtV13ouo/mqdefault.jpg)
There’s something so quintessentially British about the person saying, “I climbed down to examine the nuclear pile, and while there were no flames yet, it *was* glowing red.” I would have just been quietly saying my prayers, “flame” and “nuclear pile” are two things you never want in the same sentence, much less the same location.
Any decent nuclear power follower knows about the Windscale accident and all others. Considering how many reactors years we accumulated with inferior technology compared to what is used today, civilian nuclear production had very few accidents, with way less fatalities or long term health consequences than any other form of producing electricity on such scale.
A couple of times in this video, it's stated that a reactor meltdown would be an "atomic bomb". This is incorrect.
Not an atomic explosion, but the equal of a "dirty bomb" in the spread of radioactive pollution. The reactor could explode, but it would most likely be a hydrogen explosion, caused by cooling water, or a hot air explosion caused by rapid heating.
Yes actually, a nuclear detonation, a la SL-1, KIWI-TNT, and Chernobyl, plus many of the small test reactors in Idaho. Not mushroom cloud class nuclear detonations, but nuclear detonations none the less - made worse by occurring in the core of an operating reactor with a large fission inventory.
In the case of the Hanford reactors, an accident would have been horrific. The reactors were run on the ragged edge to maximize plutonium production. The temperature in the room pressure core channels exceeded boiling in the back center of the cores resulting in two-phase flow. This reduced heat transfer and increased fuel temperature resulting in 1,962 fuel slug failures. The "coolant" laced with hexavalent chromium (to minimize fuel and channel corrosion) entered the bottom of the Columbia at 195-212F. Do you like your salmon boiled?
The radioactivity in the river in the mid 1960s exceeded the then safety standard for people in Pasco, Washington - at 114% of the 1960s limit for intestinal radiation dose. This resulted in the Bi-State Water Quality Control Commission considering the shutting down of all fishing in the River. That potential action resulted in a year long shutdown of the reactors at Hanford, and changes in operations. DOE recognized how damaging the shutdown of fishing would be on Hanford.
Also little known: The Hanford reactors were used both to produce highly fissile Uranium-233 by bombardment of Thorium-232, adding greatly to the reactivity in the cores. In total the Hanford reactors produced over a metric ton of U-233 fir weapons use. The Savannah River Site Reactors did the same fir a tital production if two metric tons of U-233.
The Hanford reactors suffered severe distortion of the graphite and channels due to Wigner energy storage and graphite lattice distortion. They two underwent heating to release the stored Wigner energy.
@@tunneloflight There is a term for this: "nuclear excursion". Calling it a "nuclear detonation" or "atomic bomb" is misleading, IMO. In the video, they were clearly implying that there could have been a mushroom cloud over Windscale, but that was not actually true.
@@cpm1003 No, it isn't a "bomb". It isn't 'droppable' or 'delivereable'. But neither is it simply an "excursion". When prompt criticality destroys the reactor it is by definition a nuclear detonation.
@@cpm1003 Calling it a "nuclear excursion" is about like talking about someone driving a car on the freeway and saying they 'left the paved road' while omitting that they exceeded any speed the car could possibly do, went for a short trip cross country, then sailed off the rim of the Grand Canyon, gaining significant air time and impacted the bottom far wall of the canyon at a high mach number, leaving only a stain and debris. Though "bomb" is incorrect technically. And though it wouldn't produce a classic "mushroom cloud", as Chernobyl showed, it would produce a smaller version of the same with far more terrible consequences.
My daughter is 22 and works at an electrical engineering firm and was doing a job shadow day with kids from a local high-school and only 5 kids out of 50 had heard of the chernobyl accident
😩
Odd they made it sound like Tibbitz had some kind of choice in dropping Little Boy.
WOW a photo of Oppenheimer without a cigarette hanging out of his mouth
Or a Martini in his hand
I'll bet if you looked for a photo taken during that same time period, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who DOESN'T have a cigarette hanging out of their mouth!
All the videos on Windscale are amazing......pre-3 mile island-pre-Chernobyl-pre Fulishima!
It probably did not help that plant operators kept increasing the intervals between those periodic annealings. At first, they were done every 20 GWhr, but that was later increased to 30 and then to 40 GWhr. With each annealing, the process was harder to imagine and required ever hotter reactor temperatures.
title's wrong... i have seen at least 2 documentaries about Windscale before.
12:35 …. That’s how the chernobil accident happened . The scientist explained very well the little known at the time instability of graphite moderated reactors when not properly operated.
Would love to know the original airdate of these shows. Even if it is put in the video description.
Because as interesting as they are, some of them contain information that might be obsolete, or considered correct at the time, but later research has improved upon.
An overheated reactor does not make an atomic bomb. It can melt the fuel, it can turn water in to steam rapidly. If the steam pressure is not released fast enough, the steam can rapidly disassemble the vessel that contains it ( think Chernobyl ). Also the hazards present at Hanford were not due to the water cooling. The graphite moderator used set up a positive coefficient of reactivity. The same fault existed at wind scale.
Who has not heard of theWindscale accident ???!!!
Nobody. The entire thing was covered up by the british government. On my car country, the brits have the ability to stop information from going out in the news. They do not have free speech to the same degree that we have in this country. In britain, the government can put a gag order on honest situation.
Meeeeeee😏
Behind every Nuclear accident in history there was a bean counter telling an Engineer "No!"
You can get a hydrogen and steam explosion in a nuclear reactor. But not a nuclear explosion. A steam hydrogen detonation is what occurred at chernobyl. This would spread a lot of radioactive material over a sizable area. The density of the fuel in a nuclear reactor is too low for it to go critical and detonate.
Not only, the fissile material is 2/5 % enriched, against 98/99 % of a well made fission bomb.
Plus graphite burning emitted a lot of smoke
What the documentary fails to mention at all was Windscale’s proximity to Ireland an independent nation who’s eastern coast suffered clusters of cancers that were attributable to the accident- but when the British (really the English) ever worry about the damage they caused to another nation?
The English caused damage? Wasn’t that was Germany’s job until the USA saved the world? Japanese too but then they gave us reliable cars.
The wind was blowing away from Ireland during the c. 24 hours of the accident and radiation release, so very little of the released radiation reached Ireland. Also, if Ireland was contaminated, the hazard would have involved radioactive Iodine accumulating in the thyroids of children, causing thyroid cancer, as with Chernobyl. No elevation in thyroid cancer or other cancers were seen in Ireland. Also, thyroid cancer in highly curable, >98.5% are cured.
In regard to Chernobyl, there were 1,152 cases of thyroid cancer, and 14 deaths between 1986-2002 in Belarus for example, a remission rate of 98.8%. Also, the amount of radioactive iodine released by the Windscale fire was minute compared to Chernobyl.
The Windscale fire released ~1,800 TeraBecquerel of 131I, Chernobyl released 978 times more, ~ 1,760,000 TeraBecquerel. If this ratio is correct, it suggests that Windscale may have caused a few cases of thyroid cancer in children.
However, unlike the Soviets, who covered up the Chernobyl accident for several days and allowed children to drink contaminated milk, the UK immediately dumped milk and did not allow children to drink it.
"The survival rate has been 98.8% for the 1152 cases of thyroid cancer diagnosed among Chernobyl children in Belarus during 1986-2002."
The following paper, includes a map of radioactive contaminations, illustrating the wind was blowing to the south-east.
Garland, J.A. and Wakeford, R., 2007. Atmospheric emissions from the Windscale accident of October 1957. Atmospheric Environment, 41(18), pp.3904-3920.
Womp womp. Also, no. Winds were blowing away from Ireland. Correlation does not equal causation.
Ans that's if you are actually correct and that there were higher cancer rates at all.
@@DiamonddavejYou do know they use Radioactive iodine to cure thyroid cancer. I know because I spent five days locked in a hospital room after swallowing Radioactive iodine to stop my thyroid cancer from spreading and killing the cancer.
Northern Ireland is part of the UK. Not an independent country.
The pile does not become a bomb. A meltdown is not a nuclear detonation.
Tell that to Chernobyl or Fukushima…
@@LTV_inc You mean two other meltdowns that weren't nuclear exlosions? It was hydrogen, not a bomb.
If it looks like a bomb and explodes like a bomb and kills like a bomb. . . .
Not every bomb is a nuclear bomb
No, but it could go prompt-critical, and that was what blew the reactor apart during the Chernobyl accident.
Strange assumption, to think no one heard of windscale.
Especially when you are interested in nuclear disasters.
indeed, it's one of the default nuclear accidents in ordinary physics schoolbooks, along with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
NOT the world's first nuclear accident. That happened less than two weeks earlier, in Kyshtym in the Soviet Union. 29 September 1957.
In December 1952 the NRX reactor in Canada had the first serious nuclear accident. Former US president Jimmy Carter helped to clean up the mess.
@@GlenCooper-sj4lhwow
there were many before that...
there was once a whole series called "Beria - the original Dyatlov" dealing with all the accidents on USSR's way to the nuclear Bomb
@@GlenCooper-sj4lh What? Following his presidency, Jimmy Carter traveled back in time to help in the clean-up?
@@Goldfire-tt3dv Reading comprehension is not your forte.
First? Maybe publicly, the 1952 NRX accident in Canada was five years earlier and who knows what hasn't been open to the public globally. Edit: If the Americans only kept their word on the Quebec Agreement the Windscale issue woud have been less likely.
Dec 1952, an experimental nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario:
Search on "How a future president Jimmy Carter helped avert a nuclear disaster near Canada's capital"
The first nuclear accident was in 1952 at the Chalk River plant in Ontario Canada.
The resulting contamination which was removed in the cleanup was labeled Chalk River Activation Products.
It's strange that we tend to worry more about nuclear disasters, which are theoretically preventable, than natural disasters that are completely beyond our control. Maybe because how we all know how human nature goes...
Not really when you consider that it’s pointless worrying about things beyond our control.
Ah, human nature. After the Mayak disaster in the USSR, people were told not to fish from the Techa river, but not told why (internal secrecy) so they fished there anyway. Here in the US, it's the other way around - you can tell people why they shouldn't be consuming contaminated stuff, but nevertheless some of those people will tell you it's a conspiracy to take away their freedoms, or it's elitist scientists trying to take over.
exactly. we are already vanishing because of the climate change. scientists are optimistic, while in reality, every summer is hotter and hotter. this july 2024, it was 52 degrees celsius (125.6 F) in my hometown in Serbia. imagine that temperature in that part of Europe. in the 90's the hottest day oof the year would be like 32,33 C.
The thing is, there's no sense worrying about something we have absolutely no control over.
Humanity feels solidarity with one another when nature attacks- the best of us. Nuclear weapons are always humanity attacking itself - the worst of us.
I’ve read about possibly every documented radiological incident ever, Sellafield is far from obscure. That “you’ve never heard of” clickbait title is a sad tease :{ Great doc though!
December 1952, an experimental nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. How a future president Jimmy Carter helped avert a nuclear disaster near Canada's capital
Japan did not end the war immediately after the dropping of the two atomic bombs.It was very clear the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, and The Kuril Islands was what forced the Japanese surrender. The Japanese understood that the Soviets were out for blood and they were terrified of the threat to the 4 main islands by the Russians. It's very inaccurate to state that the atomic bombs was the sole reason for the surrender. In fact it's been documented that the government and military was not overly concerned about the atomic weapons.
Revisionist "history" at its worst. The "Japs" didn't surrender. Emperor Hirohito made the decision, overriding the dead-locked War Counsel. Perhaps if you bothered to study the era instead of relying on headlines, you would know better
I've heard of it.
Churchill demanded a bomb and Churchill always got what he wanted
The surrender of Japan was not "immediate", it took 6 days. After the bomb on Nagasaki August 9th the Soviet Union attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria and the surrender was announced on August 15th by Hirohito. If the Soviets did not attack it is theorized that Japan might not have surrendered. And, as commented below, if the water cooling system failed it would become a melt down NOT a bomb.
There is another BBC video of a scientist who found highly radioactive particles in his and others yards.
What is it called? I'd like to watch it.
@@sharon4364 "Our reactor is on fire" ruclips.net/video/vcsyMvQtlKs/видео.htmlsi=eMQZLng0AaAHe0wS&t=465
@@sharon4364 Not letting me link with a hot URL. Title " Our reactor is on fire" running time 47 min. Scientist finding particle at about 7 minutes in . Put up by ZilogBob 1.83Kubscribers
Very interesting and well compiled documentary. Just two small things 1. This occurrence certainly wasn't a secret, so there's no reason why people should never have heard of it (at least informed and educated people have heard of it). 2. The world is using metric measurements now so perhaps we should retire the Imperial measurements for international content.
You have to be f**king kidding me. You've never heard of? This is common knowledge to most people. I love these videos they're " Informing us!" You could find this in an old encyclopedia if you took the time to look. Next, it's we found out who bombed Dresden!
Really gets beyond comprehension
"it would be impossible to shut down the reactor before a nuclear explosion" and right there you made it abundantly clear that you don't have the first clue what you are talking about. Thumbs down, added to "do not recommend channel" list.
There is just something timeless about a british style docy
The English doc is like They want to tell you truth and again they say na not needed to …
The Brits used to be great film makers.
the risk of an aggression of the USSR at this time (and later on until today) was neclectable, because the USSR was extremely weekend by Germany in WWII and the ruling class in UK know it
in July 1959, the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in California experienced a partial nuclear meltdown....
The Atomic Energy Commission kept the meltdown a secret from the public until 1979.......
Gosh,where to start on this pile of rubbish. First, the sources of the US's fissile material (do you even know the difference between fissile vs fissionable?) The first facility to produce gram quantities of fissile material was the carbon pile at oak ridge. Then came Hanford I, then the Oak Ridge Calutron. Then came the additional Hanford pile and the unimaginably huge gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge.
Second lie: A nuclear reactor, regardless of the size or design can undergo a nuclear explosion. Things simply can't happen rapidly enough, Anyone who has had a year of physics would know that.
third lie: Quoting casualties out of context. Let's compare casualties from major events during WWII:
20,000,000 estimated total Soviet casualties during hitler's winter disaster.
80-100,000 The conventional firebombing of Dresden
34,000- 48,000 Conventional firebombing of Hamburg.
80-100,000 Conventional firebombing of Tokyo
80,0000 Hiroshima
49,000 Nagasaki
To put that into further comparison, consider that the US alone suffered approx 1,500,000 KIA in WWII.
So in the big picture, the 2 well-deserved nukings were pocket change in the total casualty accounting. What they DID do was to deliver enough shock and awe, particularly the Emperor, to get an unconditional surrender. Even after Nagasaki, the jap war council was deadlocked about whether to keep fighting or surrender. The deadlock was broken when Emperor Hirohito spoke directly to the jap people for the first time in history and told them that japan would surrender.
But Let's consider what would have happened had they chosen to continue fighting. People who know just enough to be dangerous whine about how many casualties the Allies would suffer in an invasion. An invasion was not going to happen, Gen LeMay had developed an operation to burn the island with with conventional incendiaries - if the third nuke, which was within a few days of shipping to the Pacific, didn't do it.
Then he tells the same lie about the Hanford site having a nuclear explosion if it overheated. The US engineers got it right the first time through outstanding conventional engineering.
The first time I read the then-classified report, my thought was "How could they be so stoopid, to wit:
* Designing a high powered graphite reactor cooled with air. Once heated to ts kindling temperature, graphite burns easily in air. That Biggie should have killed the idea in the first place. The almost complete misunderstanding of the chemistry was demonstrated by their failed attempt to build a CO2-cooled graphite pile. When CO2 is flowed over hot graphite, the following chemical reaction happens. CO2 + C --> 2CO. In other words, a hot graphite atom reacts with a CO2 molecule to form 2 carbon monoxide molecules. OF COURSE the graphite "eroded". OF COURSE large quantities of a poison gas are produced,
* probably the worst mistake was using metallic Uranium metal with a melting point of only 2075°F. The US uses Uranium dioxide with a melting point of 5140F. Even at the little incident at TMI2 (I worked there as as a nuclear engineering consultant for 4 years/), the center of the core got hot enough to burn off the Zircalloy paladin, the UO2 fuel pellets remained untouched.
As far as his crap about external exposure goes, it is really crap. I had access to the actual contamination levels and saw nothing to get excited about except a few square yards of grass with uncomfortably high I-131 readings. With a half-life of only 5.25 days, that was gotten rid of by the passage of time. I saw no milk analysis that got me excited. If there had been, simply refrigerating the milk for a week or so would have fixed the problem. The dumping of milk down the drains was simply a publicity stunt.
Yet another case of a kid trolling for clicks trying to talk about something of which he knows little to nothing. Thst's U-toob
Brits always Patch Up R+D when the Project is nearly ready for deployment..😊😅
I had heard of this Nuclear Catastrophe but this still was an enjoyable video.
There is another documentary made by the BBC I think that is also quite enjoyable.
I would like to state Thomas Tuohy is a bad ass and a Proper Gent.
I would have been honored to buy him a pint but sadly he has left this world.
I don't understand how he climbed up to check on that fire.
Seems like his gigantic balls would have kept him from climbing the ladder.
the testing of nuclear weapons has left effects about which the world's citizens have not been well-informed.
Very little actual need.
@@MadScientist267go lick boots
The inhabitants of the Bikini atoll are pursuing compensation for continuing health effects after some 70 years.
The concrete cap over the Bikini atoll explosion sight has deteriorated, developed cracks and its future integrity is uncertain.
@@RobertJarecki At this point the majority of the risk of being nearby is diminished. There is a direct inverse relationship between half-life and energy emission. The hottest of it is fading away and the longer isotopes will fade into background. This isn't to say "it's over", but one must understand that relationship to realize the actual effects.
Very interesting piece of history.
11:11 damn I could floss with them eyebrow hairs
Oooh lol 😊
To equate Windscale with Chernobyl is just stupid!
to comment for C: you should know, that an atomic bomb is not only a thermonuclear bomb but also a nuclear ("dirty") bomb spreading nuclear materials over the world - as was the nuclear project of Germany in WWII
So nuclear energy was an afterthought, bombs came first.
Nuclear power was an afterthought. A "counterbalance" to the bad image of "bad nuclear" projected by the bomb.
Anything ever used FOR people has to first be determined to not be usable as a weapon AGAINST people. What people? Well none as yet but they'll show themselves n well be ready!
No. Einstein thought of using said energy but once said jew passed the knowledge to muricans, they went straight to make a bomb so they could kill innocent people.
It’s war that most of our everyday come from just look up duct tape it was once the military use, and then it became publicly
Yes, as it was in the USA and USSR also
There's been a great deal of emphasis placed on the detonation of the two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki being the key factor which convinced the Japanese to surrender to America. This is a gross overstatement. Strictly speaking, the atomic bombings did not impress the Japanese command staff overly much. They had seen countless cities and towns (including Tokyo) virtually bombed to ashes by conventional means since the American B-29s could get within range. From a purely tactical and operational standpoint, it didn't matter much if a city was incinerated by thousands of planes dropping tens of thousands of bombs, or one plane dropping one bomb. Granted, in those few days between the bombing and their surrender, they hadn't had time to absorb and process the full effects of the bombs (fallout, radiation sickness and poisoning, etc.). However, what convinced most of the Japanese that surrender to the Americans was the only viable option open was the declaration of war by the Soviets, and their invasion of Manchuria. They knew full well that having their nation cut in half between competing American and Soviet spheres of influence would be far worse for them than if they found themselves under sole American occupation. They also knew that Stalin had no problem sending millions of Soviet soldiers to die on Japanese soil the way that America would wince at such a prospect. Stalin would pour his men into the meatgrinder by the handful, never counting the cost. This was the calculation ultimately being made which brought the Japanese to their final surrender. They did not want to find themselves like Germany, being sliced down the middle by two allied superpowers that were destined to become belligerent adversaries.
Better by far to just deal with one, rather than to be pulled apart like a toy being wrestled over by two angry children.
Well done 👏 👏
issn´t it customary anymore to at least show the names of the people you interview in documentaries? who are these people? one looks like paul krugman, but he´s an economist not sure about his credentials concerning the windscale incident but WTF? no sources no names just deal with it
No I've heard of this just fine.
It's fun seeing so many shirtless men! But it makes me wonder: is it that hot where they're working? 🇨🇦
Hot yes. Note no fat ones before the seed oil in foods.
I would suggest yes it was really that hot. These British Atomic Bomb tests were done at Pacific Islands to the North East of Australia and the Montebello Islands off the Northern Coast of Western Australia, both very tropical climate or near a place called Maralinga in the South Australian Desert, a very hot dry place during summer.
@@UQRXD Thank you, Beast. Fun fact: my cat's name is Bestia ~ Italian for Beast, Female version. 🐈
@@stevehunt4660 Thanks, Steve. Are you from Australia? 🐍
@@CrystalAbrahams yes, from South Australia and spent much time in central South Australia.
"you've never heard of"?!? You really need to stop insulting your audience - or potential audience.
Wah wah wah
All of these men glow when you turn the lights off.
This is why Hatch Green Chili's are Smokey in Flavor and a Robust Finish, the Pride of New Mexico. USA 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶
Stupid !
Clickbait title. Windscale is widely known.
indeed. very misleading
Well I had never heard of it. So...
Agreed - Windscale is very widely known and I remember the event well,
Not really. I would argue most casual people today havent heard of it
Everybody has heard about Sellafield/Windscale. Except those living under rocks or being morons.
The positive aspect of this was you could find your cheese if the lights went out.
Radio activity is there for you and me.
No wasting money on an electric light in the refrigerator.
no need to spray tan ladies, just be sure to bring your sunglasses!
???
@@YunxiaoChu !!!
for all nuclear fans: in the last 50 years the human cancer numbers are up from 20% to 50%
All the credits have been scraped from this video. How many decades old is it?? Reminds me of films shown in school in the 1970s
I think this was from the 80s or early 90s. I've seen a few videos on this topic. I really dislike that the original dates are not mentioned, along with original credits.
Sir Edward Teller died in 2003, so this is at least 20 years old.
Most of the clips are from this documentary.
ruclips.net/video/lOgSlFkv71U/видео.html&pp=ygUtd2luZHNjYWxlIGJyaXRhaW4ncyBiaWdnZXN0IG51Y2xlYXIgZGlzYXN0ZXIg
At 39:54 the narrator says " looking back from 4 decades on" so I would guess late 90s. The video uses a lot of old film footage which makes it look a lot older.
@@stevem.1853 it's a combination of different films... some of the more "artistic Noir footage" you see is from a film made by an organization that we now know to have been linked to the British communists... once the story became public they did a lot to try to so greater fear through such films... large chunks are from an early ITV documentary (1993 I think), but which also served as a basis for a later much longer documentary done by a Canadian group... they did many of the later interviews, and the documentary is somewhere out there on RUclips... I want to say it is part of Bad-Day_HQ but not sure
Thought you said I'd never heard of it. Knew it likely wasn't true just with the claim but the video confirmed it.
They thought none of that would kill anyone?
First I have gotten to see Hanford
1:48 not even a close resemblance to the "real" Oppenheimer we know from the movie
I actually knew about this from 2 other sources, but the Wigner Effect is real and has to be controlled..
Radio activity is there for you and me.
Windscale is not unheard of. Its well know
The UK thought they knew it alll
They always do. Modern Sellafield will cost £500 billion and 100 years to remediate.
Video assumes that everyone is a moron and knows only about Chernobyl.
6.21 'post war Britain in 1939'...!
Where can I get one?
Eat lots of bean's
Amazon
I love nuclear power 🥰!
Gota love it.
How much us nuclear desasters people never Heard about...?!....
I believe he said white hot ..when he looked in to the reactor.... white hot
Those angels are not human?
Easier, here, go play with matches. Just like was said
Those strange " angels" the Bible talks about?
Windscale
So no actual catastrophe…. Good!
Was the people that split the atom that took the world into the nuclear age
Yes, that man is depicted on the New Zealand $100 bill.
They wanted atom bombs.
I have general knowledge but i wish that i could be intelligent.
Oppenheimer and Groves were "delighted"......😏🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃😒
That voice!!!!
Madness F-in Madness 😵💫
*Join the Enlightenment, select Secular humanism.*
Well done, thank you.
I knew this.
Who's best interests, CANCER: only til 2024 still requesting and looking for cures,???
It is all madness
The British are the ones that gave them( the ideas. and the Know-how, ( not compelely) but because we owe them money. we had to capitulate. Real truth and I can prove it!
by air big mistake
I remember the concern when I was a child. The huge upsurge in people being born North of Dublin with Down's Syndrome. Dublin to Dundalk. My parents' generation firmly believed it was due to this. I have worked with ppl in their 50's+ in Dublin who live with Down's Syndrome. Often wonder...
This is a myth. Downs syndrome is a condition caused by a duplication of Chromosome 13, it is not caused by ionizing radiation. The risk factor is giving birth at an older age, older mothers are far more likely to give birth to a child with Downs syndrome. Also, remember Ireland was very Catholic back in the day, we did not do birth control, so it was not uncommon for women to give birth in their 40s. My landlady in Athlone was 49 years old when she gave birth to her last son, her second youngest (a couple of years younger) had Downs Syndrome (she lived to 97, and last I heard the oulfella is still alive at 104).
So this talk of Windscale causing clusters of Downs syndrome is likely a deflection, ignoring the Elephant in the Room, Catholic Ireland and older mothers giving birth, resulting in the highest rates of Downs Syndrome in the world at one time.
Also, there's technical reasons why radiation cannot cause Downs syndrome:
Ionizing radiation cannot duplicate a chromosome. A radioactive particle hits DNA, splitting it in half. This is called a DNA double strand break. There are DNA repair mechanisms that try to fix this damage, the repair mechanism evolved because radiation is natural, we need to repair low levels of radiation damage. That said, there are rare genetic illness where this repair mechanism is absent, e.g. Ataxia Telangiectatica.
People with Ataxia Telangiectatica are highly sensitive to radiation, they cannot receive an X-ray, or they will develop cancer. This illustrates the fact healthy people repair most radiation damage. There's also experimental medications and a suggestion that increasing antioxidants, e.g. vitamin E, might help the repair process. This is an important topic of research, as it might increase people's ability to cope with high levels of radiation, that benefits e.g., cancer patients receiving radiotherapy and astronauts on Mars missions.
However, even in normal people, sometimes the repair process goes wrong, splicing the wrong section of DNA, reversing chunks of DNA or there's a missing a chunk of DNA. If this damage affects the wrong part of DNA, it can cause cancer.
(UV radiation, sun, causes single strand breaks)
those things happen also because of time pressure and dead lines - idiotic economists teach all over the word
At 30:32. The lamp on the left looks like an atomic explosion. Lol. I thought it was a picture for a second.
Waste of time on earth, killing people
The U.S. warned the Japanese before dropping the first bomb and asked them to surrender. Before dropping the 2nd, they were asked again.
Air cooled nuclear reactor......... Just the word is unbelievable funny!!!! 🤣😂🤣😂
Like this bad idea, to built such a horrible reactor type 🤮🤮🤮🤣🤣🤣
Hah! Reading your headline, I was curious as to whether you were going to get into Sodom and Gomorrah or maybe Mohenjo Daro! This is interesting, though. As you say, I never heard of it.
Belligerence?
The Japanese already surrendered when Stalins men marched on Manchuria and Russia declared war on Japan...the nuke was American noise and that noise continues in propaganda to this day.
Good thing that nuclear weapons can never fall into the hands of an old dying narcissist that decides to take us with them.
And it's a good thing that nuclear weapons are not now under the control of a megalomaniac. Such a person might threaten to use nuclear weapons in a special military operation.
@@RobertJareckiPutler is a megalomaniac in control of over 6,000 nuclear warheads.
@@RobertJareckiLike Putler?
What are you talking about, biden still has his finger on the nuclear button.
@@arnoldpalmer9897 Has your weapon been commented on by a Mr. Trump lately?
It was definitely a good idea!