Windscale

Arnold, L., Windscale 1957, Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident St. Martin s Press, New York, 1992. 

A second source of plutonium, dispersed more locally, is liquid effluent from fuel reprocessing facilities. One such is the fuel reprocessing plant at Windscale, Cumbria in the United Kingdom where liquid waste is released to the Irish Sea(6). Chemical analysis of this effluent shows that about one percent or less of the plutonium is in an oxidized form before it contacts the marine water(7). Approximately 95 percent of the plutonium rapidly adsorbs to particulate matter after discharge and deposits on the seabed while 5 percent is removed from the area as a soluble component ). Because this source provided concentrations that were readily detected, pioneering field research into plutonium oxidation states in the marine environment was conducted at this location. 

These observations contrast with some of the results obtained in natural waters. In the experiments where contaminated sediments were equilibrated with Lake Michigan water for a number of days, the Pu(IV) that was on the sediments and was transferred to the water was oxidized to Pu(V), with the oxidation occurring either during or after desorption (15). The studies in the Irish Sea near Windscale show that although no more than 1 percent of the waste effluent stream is oxidized plutonium, approximately 5 percent of the plutonium released leaves the area in the currents of the Irish Sea as oxidized plutonium. Most of the plutonium, therefore, must be oxidized fairly rapidly in sea water. 

Irish Sea, site impacted by Windscale Reprocessing Plant and reference sites, 1977 EPA 1984... 

MaVchliNe, J. and Templeton, W. L. (1963). Dispersion in the Irish Sea of the radioactive liquid effluent from Windscale Works of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, Nature 198, 623. 

Gallie, R.R. and Hewitt, P.V., Eighteen years of operating and development experience with Windscale AGR, Nucl. Energy, 1982, 21,21 28. 

Butex A process for separating the radioactive components of spent nuclear fuel by solvent extraction from nitric acid solution, using diethylene glycol dibutyl ether (also called Butex, or dibutyl carbitol) as the solvent. Developed by the Ministry of Supply (later the UK Atomic Energy Authority) in the late 1940s. Operated at Windscale from 1952 until 1964 when it was superseded by the Purex process. 

FINGAL [Fixation in Glass of Active Liquors] A batch process for immobilizing nuclear waste in a borosilicate glass. Developed by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority from 1958 and piloted at its Windscale Works 1962-1966. After a lapse of several years, the project was resumed in 1972 under the acronym HARVEST. 

The rate of dissolution of these reaction products is slow (1.5-2 fig/day per 50-70 mg of solids). Lai and Goya 147) showed that at least 90% of these plutonium aggregates had a diameter <0.01 jum. However, it must be stressed that these forms do not necessarily represent those forms which would be produced as a result of an accidental release from a nuclear power plant or as a result of controlled release from nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities such as those which occur at Windscale in England. 

In 1942, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company adapted a diethylether extraction process to purify tons of uranium for the U.S. Manhattan Project [2] later, after an explosion, the process was switched to less volatile extractants. For simultaneous large-scale recovery of the plutonium in the spent fuel elements from the production reactors at Hanford, United States, methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) was originally chosen as extractant/solvent in the so-called Redox solvent extraction process. In the British Windscale plant, now Sellafield, another extractant/solvent, dibutylcarbitol (DBC or Butex), was preferred for reprocessing spent nuclear reactor fuels. These early extractants have now been replaced by tributylphosphate [TBP], diluted in an aliphatic hydrocarbon or mixture of such hydrocarbons, following the discovery of Warf [9] in 1945 that TBP separates tetravalent cerium from... 

Several accidents in nuclear facilities have been extensively analyzed and reported. The three most widely publicized accidents were at Windscale (now known as Sellafield), United Kingdom, in 1957 Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979 and Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 (UNSCEAR 1988 Severn and Bar 1991 Eisler 1995). From the accident at Windscale about 750 trillion (T)Bq 22 TBq Cs, 3 TBq Sr, and 0.33 TBq °Sr were released and twice the amount of noble gases that were released at Chernobyl, but 2000 times less and Cs. From the Three Mile Island accident, about 2% as much noble gases and 50,000 times less than from the Chernobyl accident were released. The most abundant released radionuclides at Three Mile Island were Xe, Xe, and but the collective dose equivalent to the population during the first post-accident days was <1% of the dose accumulated from natural background radiation in a year. 

Clarke, R. H. 1974. An analysis of the Windscale accident using the WERRIE code. American Nuclear Science Engineering, 1, 73-74. 

Dunster, H. J., Howells, H. Templeton, W. L. 1958. District surveys following the Windscale incident, October 1957. In Proceedings of the Second UN Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. United Nations, New York. 

April 10-12, 1973, Sess 3, Pap. 311, 19 p. Available from UK at Energy Auth., Windscale, Seascale, Cumberland, England, 1973. 

Windscale II plant in the UK. In this the uranium and plutonium are back-extracted together in a first cycle of decontamination. They are then separated in a second cycle of solvent extraction and independent back-extraction. The factors affecting the choice of flowsheet type have been reviewed and criticality control is an important consideration in the process design.286... 

Accidents with nuclear reactors or nuclear bombs can expose large numbers of people to several decay products of uranium, and iodine isotopes are among the most abundant compounds released in such reactions. It is therefore logical to use salts of stable isotopes of iodine to prevent the accumulation of radioiodine in a person or population at risk of such exposure. The accidents in Windscale (UK), Three Mile Island (USA), and particularly Chernobyl (Ukraine) drew attention to such problems. The major question is therefore whether the potential adverse effects of stable iodine when given indiscriminately to large... 

Huggard, A.J., Warner, B.F. 1963. Investigations to determine the extent of degradation of TBP/odorless kerosene solvent in the new separation plant, Windscale. Nucl. Sci. Eng. 17 638-650. 

Bismuth was irradiated in the Windscale reactor to make 210Po for use in nuclear weapons, and in the reactor fire of October 1957, an estimated 8.8 TBq (240 Ci) of 210Po was released to atmosphere (Crick Linsley, 1983). The fact that 210Po was released was published at the time (Stewart Crooks, 1958 Blok, 1958). 

Crick, M.J. Linsley, G.S. (1983) An assessment of the radiological impact of the Windscale reactor fire of October, 1957. National Radiological Protection Board, Chilton. Report R-135, Addendum. 

Stewart, N.G. Crooks, R.N. (1958) Long range travel of the radioactive cloud from the accident at Windscale. Nature, 182, 627-30. 

Table 2.3 shows the estimated releases of 90Sr, 131I, 137Cs and 144Ce in the Nevada tests, the thermonuclear tests (H tests), the 1957 Windscale accident, the 1957 accident at a separation plant in the Urals... 

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