Windscale: The British Chernobyl 

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"Meltdown is one of those annoying buzz words...we prefer to think of this as an unwanted energy surplus"- C.M. Burns

3:52 gosh I can't imagine how building a nuclear facility as fast as possible could backfire

I spoke to my Grandpa after watching this video as I knew he worked in nuclear power and it turns out he was at Windscale the day of the disaster! His specialty was metallurgy and he was asked to help out after the disaster (he travelled to all the power plants in the country so wasn't always at Windscale). It was his idea to use ceramic instead of metal for the casing or something to help contain it afterwards. When I was little I used to tell people he saved the world and I guess he kind of did!

The first time I ever heard "The reactor is critical" I was on a submarine and I asked if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Near the end of the five years I was stationed on submarines I finally asked why all the terminology concerning the reactor made it sound like we were all about to die.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the fact that the pile was air cooled and it was switching off the cooling fans (very late) which almost certainly averted disaster and allowed the water quenching to work. The fact that no-one appeared to realise for quite a long time that blowing air over a fire may be exascerbating the problem is quite remarkable. Anyway, great video love the channel.

Day 7: "I've lost count of all the videos simon put out. All is simon. All is knowledge"

Parallel universe would have had Simon with no beard and a full head of hair.

I have always found this particular nuclear accident fascinating. The documentary "Our Reactor is on Fire" is particularly good.

Wasn't alive for Windscale but I do remember school ushering us indoors as the air-raid siren sounded after Chernobyl and the TV news warned of acid rain. Flipping cold war was a paranoia fest. Dead sheep, melted bus shelters, etc. Ah the life of a GenX.

1:30 - Chapter 1 - Atomic betrayal 4:45 - Chapter 2 - Follies & inaccuracies 7:45 - Mid roll ads 9:20 - Chapter 3 - Smoke on the water 13:10 - Chapter 4 - Fire in the sky 17:30 - Chapter 5 - The poison room

My Grandfather worked at the Dounreay Nuclear Plant in Scotland while this happened. He was brought down to help them with the situation. (I don't know *any* of the science or what he did, but it's still neat)

Love how Simon didn’t even pause when describing the reactor going critical like it’s not a bad thing. Because it’s not.

Tom Touhy not only had balls of steel, but it was not the water that put the fire out. It was actually turning of the reacter fans, and the fire died down.

Went on a school trip in the 90s. Stood on top of the reactor. Looked into the cooling pools, they really do glow blue.

Windscale is a reminder of the dangers of hubris and how important it is to listen to the experts. The alternate reality that Simon alluded to was frightening and needs to be avoided at all costs.

"In the event of a nuclear plant melting down, there's only one thing you can do. Rename it. To Sellafield." - Spitting Image

All nuclear accidents have one thing in common, cost cutting...

Often missed in Project Hurricane... the fallout fell across half of Australia. People in the North West of Australia had significantly higher rates of tumor cancer if they were alive during that event. The subsequent tests in South Australia contaminated local indigenous and UK/Austrlaian workers as well. The irony... UK uranium was sourced in Australia (Austrlaia has the largest deposits in teh world), tested in Australia, and hurt Australians... unsurprisingly, Australia avoids having their own nuclear weapons and now has a policy to not sell their uranium for anything except peaceful purposes.

Megaprojects: Tube Alloys.

Ah yes the good man Cockcroft. Responsible for turning a potential Chernobyl into a meer 3 Mile Island.

everyone: in the comments raving on about obscure anime references. me: huh, "smoke on the water" "fire in the sky" nice allusion to a Deep Purple classic. :-)

This is the first I've heard of windscale, and I appreciate your taking the time to inform us about this disaster.

Watching Simon for over 2 years now, and I have to say, the beard progression has been nothing short of spectacular.

Love your work. Unfortunately, you missed on part of the story. The water from hoses was tried, but it did not work. The fire was put out when Tom Touhy, after seeing the water was not doing the job, convinced management to turn off the fans and shut down the cooling air to the reactor. This deprived the fire of oxygen and put out the fire. The use of air cooling for the reactor set the stage for the accident. Rather than using water, as was done by the Americans at Hanford, the British used air cooling because it was faster and cheaper. They did not want to go to the expense of setting up a water cooling system. That decision was the source of the comment "it was a dodgy design from the beginning"

Why did the scientist at Chernobyl cry? Because he was going through a meltdown

"Or Joseph Joestar being the best JoJo" This is, indeed, objective fact.

Tom Tuohy is the true definition of a hero. He was someone who was intelligent enough to know that what sticking his head over that pile could do to him, yet he still just went ahead and did it. It's pretty sad that he didn't even get some sort of recognition from the country. It wouldn't make him live longer, but at least it's something that his family could always cherish.

We know about Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. How the heck did we not know about Windscale???

Your Geographics writers are great. I love how so many Geographics videos bring in philosophical/ethics questions that we need to consider.

So despite the fact that I live in the UK and have friends working at Sellafield, I've only just learnt that Windscale (which I studied during my Chemical Engineering degree) is the same place. Doh!

I'd have to watch the "Our reactor is on fire" documentary again to be more sure, but I think the emissions from the poorly designed and maintained filters, and some of the fuel casings pushed out the back that didn't fall in the pool but lodged in the airways were actually more (albeit over a longer period of time, during normal operation) than what was emitted during the fire. Would have been different of course had the fire not been brought under control. Giant balls of steel. Great line 🙂

If Simon declared Joseph the best jojo, who are we to argue?

Water didn't put it out, they switched off the fans to kill the fire

Households in Ireland received a safety booklet and some iodine tablets in the wake of this. My mam remembers getting it in the post and reading it out to the family. The advice in it included staying inside for a few days and putting newspaper over the windows to stop the radiation getting in.

I worked at Windscale in the late seventies, on pond five. It has saved me a fortune in electricity bills, I can read in bed without the light on or a torch!

Me all the way through this video. Heh, they're down the road.

You forgot about the part where the managers took all the credit for putting out the fire, and the engineers were blamed for everything that led to the fire.

6:43. It vapourised quite a bit of HMS Plym, but not all of it. Half a dozen pieces have been found in the floor of the crater in the the basin, but your not allowed to start digging anything up. More interesting, is that a lot of ships parts were found on the surrounding islands after the test. I've spoken to a few veteran's who helped remove the equipment that was left behind. They've told me that several large holes were dug and all the parts of the ship, plus anything else that was contaminated were dumped in to them. No record of where those dumps were situated appears to have been kept. Great video! So many people have no idea about this accident.

Alright, I know Simon would never intentionally make this many anime references. Clearly the writer just wants to hear him say weeb stuff.

From what i have heard, it wasn't the water that put the fire out, but turning off the air fans that were used to control the tempriture of the pile (while also fanning the flames)

The thing that I find fascinating is that up until I saw this video, I’ve never heard of this. I went to high school, read books…a lot, and know a lot of useless information about the world. I love Europe. I try to stay somewhat informed. I’d fair well on Jeopardy 🤓. But there is SO much more information out there that in my 57 years I haven’t even tipped the scales. You and your crews are doing great jobs with the video content Simon. Bravo Zulu folks, keep up the great work . Peace Love & Groovies to everyone 😎

"Gigantic balls of steel" Yes he did bring them, indeed

3:16 Simon saying that Joseph Joestar being the best JoJo caught me off guard. It's not wrong, but it did catch me off-guard.

My great grandfather was the one who actually raised the alarm at Sellafield. His boss got all the credit when he had been asleep at the time.

For my Undergrad I went to Plymouth, they don't tell us they test the Alarms at the Devenport base which holds Nuclear Subs, so when you he the basic "air-raid" siren for the 1st time, it does worry you a bit.

Great video Simon. Very well done. Could you do a video on the Three Mile Island Incident in 1979 and on the 1978 Willow Island Disaster?

I wish people didn't still think that the storage of high level nuclear material was "anyone's guess". We have spent millions upon millions of pounds figuring out exactly how to store this waste. The problem is not an engineering one but a political one.

This man out here callin himself whistler but doesn't whistle on any of his channels smh my head

That's mental, I live 30 minutes away from this powerplant, never knew there was a close call like that

Had a professor try to fail me for writing a paper on nuclear accidents. Said that the first accident in the USA was 3 mile island. Needless to say he got fired quickly. He supposedly had a degree in nuclear engineering

10:45 Attack on Titan, love that show!

I can’t stop watching, listening, learning! I’m addicted to these videos. So much to know!

I really really appreciate that JoJos bizarre adventure reference

I was living in Cumbria with my parents when this took place. She told me that milk and water were tankered in, and none of the meat from local sheep and cattle was allowed to be sold. My father died of cancer in 1964 and I remain convinced to this day that he incurred it because of Windscale. No one else from our extended family has ever had any type of cancer.

My dad was born and raised just a 20 min drive away, in Ravenglass. He was eight years old when this happened and all he remembers is that no one made a big deal of it at the time. He didn't learn how bad it was until much, much later. Compare that to my own experience of Chernobyl -- I was seven years old, living in a uranium mining town in Canada, and I knew *exactly* how bad it was because everyone was talking about it non-stop. [Edit: By the way, my grandfather, who lived there for about 50 years, died of an extremely painful, extremely vicious form of bone cancer.]

Kinda missed out on the whole Wigner Effect and Wigner Release which played a quite important role in why it took so long for the operators to realize there was a fire. For anyone interested: Free neutrons above a certain amount of energy can dislocate carbon atoms inside the crystal structure of the graphite. These dislocated atoms end up in non-ideal places inside the crystal structure, giving them some potential energy. This can be explained as a sort of tension due to the electromagnetic forces of the orbiting electrons pushing the atoms apart, like pushing two magnets together with the same ends facing each other. This energy can be released if the graphite is heated, causing further heating. Normally they would do something called annealing (or in the case of Windscale a Wigner Release) in which they purposely heat the graphite to cause the energy to be released before too much potential energy is pent up inside the graphite. On the days of the accident the reactor was heating up unevenly. One fuel channel was heating up more than the others. Thinking some energy had built up due to the Wigner Effect, the operators heated the whole reactor by external means to cause a Wigner Release. On the second try everything heated evenly and the Wigner Release was considered a success. What they didn't know at this point was that one of the fuel capsules had burst and ignited long before this. This was the actual cause for that one fuel channel to heat more than the others, not the Wigner Effect. After they turned off the heating the temperatures didn't decrease so they turned up the cooling fans, causing the radiation readings to increase. They realized a fuel cartridge had burst but as this had happened in the past, it didn't really concern them. The higher fan speed gave the fire more oxygen, making it spread faster. Only when the temperature still increased after turning up the fans they knew there was a fire (which they at this point didn't know had been burning for about two days already), which was then visually confirmed by Tuohy.

"The British Chernobyl"? Sound like it would've been called "the Soviet Windscale"?

I don't think it's right to describe Calder Hall as primarily for electricity generation. Really it was mainly for plutonium production (at least in the early years) and the electricity was a nice story for PR purposes. The original piles of course didn't produce any electricity at all, they were 100% for nuclear weapons.

Why must EVERYTHING be a JoJo reference?!?!?

Very cool video but you did miss out a few facts. For one it was the british governments impatience at the slow rate of production of plutonium which caused the nuclear scientists to remove and shorten fins from the cartridges that held the uranium fuel in place in the fuel channels. The fins created space between the carts and the channels for cooling air to pass. Removing them created more reactivity and heat and thus faster plutonium production, but the heat cased the carts to deform, melt, rupture and get wedged into the channels. Secondly their tried to blast water down the channels via scaffolding poles to both put out the fire and try to push the fuel out of the core. Finally it wasn't water that put the fire out. It was air. They tried for days to water the reactor but it wasn't working. Eventually they took a risk of fanning the flames and turned the cooling fans to max, and it eventually worked. The temps dropped and the fire went out. But yes, a very good video all in all, Keep em coming.

I never thought there would be a JoJo reference in a Geographics video.

*The white flickers from the helicopter footage at the very beginning of the video are neutrons and gamma rays flaying out of the reactor. The people on that helicopter and camera man were getting life time doses of radiation in just minutes. Several pilots died of acute radiation and many many more would get cancer or other dieases even though they were thousands of feet away flying for just minutes. Unlike fukushima that reactor was not at 6% of capacity but at 3000 times full capacity of three gigawatts* Ironic that nuclear is our only way out of global warming crisis*

Hi, Simon and Co. I cannot help but notice the thread of emphasis throughout your videos on the dark sides of nuclear power and waste, and the tone of tragic inevitability. Might I suggest that you do a video on the history and progress of nuclear energy, and of the developments and hurdles that researchers face? More often than not nuclear accidents are due to official mismanagement, cutting corners, or reluctance to listen to throughly expert criticisms of designs or procedures due to short-term inconvenience or cost. The channel Plainly Difficult has a series of videos that highlight exactly these failings. Nuclear accidents of fire or poisoning or radioactive contamination are not uncontrollable chaotic inevitabilities; they are largely matters of ignorance, neglect, and hubris. I personally believe that nuclear energy is the best way forward at this time. The barriers are popular fear and politicians ignorant of science and disinterested in risking their careers. The latest designs and experiments are safe enough to walk away from, with multiple failsafes of electronic, mechanical, and even passive designs. Some are even designed to desalinate seawater as a BYPRODUCT. Free, clean, fresh water. Some reactors are designed solely around the purpose of steam distillation, with the electricity generated being used to further focused around purifying and otherwise handling the water generated. We can have it better than ever.

Point of order, Simon. Windscale was put out by shutting off the air to the pile. They had to smother it because even the water wasn't getting it done.

Sellafield is a bit of a running joke out West. Not just the people living around it have extra fingers and limbs, but that they’re paid a metric f tonne of cash for doing absolutely nothing I can make these jokes because my partner works for CNC

It wasn’t the “I’m not playing with you faze,” It was the “Revenge is mine” faze. The more cooks in the kitchen, the more they share your secret recipe.

An Attack on Titan reference Simon I’m impressed!

15:32: it would have caused a hydrogen gas explosion, not a hydrogen fusion explosion. Not great, but not that terrible.

Yes a man who was slagged off but he saved the UK and yet Mr Cockcroft was still treated like dogshit ! :(

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is now one of the most biodiverse regions in Europe. The wilderness has reclaimed a lot of it and I just wonder what the Lake District could look like now.

Where’s Homer Simpson when you need him. Wouldn’t of happened on his watch.

Sellafield also currently stores high level nuclear waste in a shallow open-air pond, causing it to remain warm year-round; they hire people to shoot at birds to prevent them from sitting in it and dispersing the radioactive contamination throughout the surrounding area through bird droppings.

Anyone else have Deep Purple stuck in their head?

Amazing videos my man! Thank you for sharing your great works!

Never heard of this before so thanks for making the video. Also just learned about the US spreading radiation across the country & how Kodak of all things found out.

I liked how he used the term “glowing” when talking about radiation 😂

Might be interesting to see a video on 3 mile island. Always interesting to see how it compares to the other great nuclear disasters of the 1900s.

I always find it funny that the designers thought an air cooled, open-cycle reactor with a graphite core was a good idea.

At this point in time, I bet very few people actually think the people in charge know what they are doing, heck, even the people in charge don't know what they are doing.

This needs more views!

Bit of extra information, maybe fixing some inaccuracies: First of all this plant was air cooled, I think it is important to point out. It's fuel was contained in finned aluminium cartridges and would look like a giant graphite cheese with sideways holes with cartridges inside. (Oversimplified, but gives a imaginable picture). So they were shaving off from the fin size and in the long run cutting the thickness of cartridge walls to have more plutonium yields, later tritium (they needed more heat for those) for the bombs, making these cartridges less safe. And having just a big f. fan blowing through it out through the chimneys and the filters. As for the graphite core, sometimes in some spots it had some anomalies, energy built up in certain spots called Wigner energy. To get rid off these, you would heat up the core to a degree and it will even out getting rid of these energy dense anomalies called Wiger release. As they were making less thick cartridges, some starting to fail before. And you have most of the puzzle pieces to the point, when the fire happens. They see the anomalies try to do a wigner release, that didn't work, but then they double down on it (which worked before) and still no result. Then we jump to the point when they know it is a fire, they started to try to cool down and put out the fire by water (now you see it is a big difference to mention this is an air cooled reactor) no luck. The fan is full blast to keep the whole thing cooled but feeding the fire, in the end they turn off the fans to see what happens, lucky enough it worked. - this is a super simplified extra information just to give a clearer picture. If you are interested there is a great documentary on youtube how they try to blame the workers, and how they cut corners and going for more unsafe route to get their a and h bombs. And te wiki is well detailed on the accident to have a great picture what happened. On the other hand I pretty much agree with most of the conclusion.

USSR v britain: false equivalency; rest easy lads USSR v USA: frighteningly close competition for biggest legacy of brutality and incompetence

The fire was killed by cutting off the oxygen, the water didn't really do that much

Did he...just make a jojo reference? LEGEND!

At 19:40 steel drums are mentioned. They will never last the thousands of years needed to contain the waste and will long since have degraded/corroded.

If anything, Chernobyl should be called the "Ukrainian Windscale" because it was after

We left in 1956 … but lived near there before leaving.

loving the "blink and you miss it" Coronavirus shade at the end

4:55 Sir John Cockcroft is always portrayed as the guy who thought up the idea of putting filters on top of each of the two pile chimneys. It must be true, they even named them after him, right? Wrong. The guy who thought up the idea was called Terence Price, a physicist from Harwell nuclear research lab.

Who came here from the Atomfall game teaser?

I grew up about 30 minutes away from Los Alamos, so naturally this has my attention.

3:18 not just a man of culture, a man of exquisite taste.

I hate to tell you Simon, but in this universe, whole swaths of Cumbria ARE uninhabitable.

British Vsauce

i've lost count of the amount of times it's changed its name between Sellafield or Windscale after every very MINOR ACCIDENT that occured I used to stay in Co. Durham 1974 to 78.

"Could've left the Lake District an irradiated wasteland" ... So you're telling me it isn't?

This is purely overstated. The usage of almost and perhaps and over run. My cousins had the farm next door that wasn't allegedly bulldozed. There was a minor disaster. The milk was tipped down mineshafts. Unlike Chernobyl it wasn't uninhabitable. I've told you a million times don't exaggerate.

Not all heroes wear hair... But all heroes wear beard !!!

I can't reconcile the difference between all of Simon's "other" channels and the blaze.