Windscale fire Wikipedia

Material
Half
life
Windscale
Three Mile Island
(compared to
Windscale)
Chernobyl
Fukushima Daiichi
(atmospheric)
Iodine-
131
8.0197
days
740
much less
1,760,000
130,000
Caesium-
137
30.17
years
22
much less
79,500
35,000
Xenon-
133
5.243
days
12,000
6,500,000
17,000,000
Xenon-
135
9.2
hours
25 × Windscale
Strontium-
90
28.79
years
much less
80,000
Plutonium
6,100
Aftermath
Radioactive release

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28.11.2023, 23:24
Windscale fire - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
9/18
The presence of the chimney scrubbers at Windscale was credited with maintaining partial
containment and thus minimising the radioactive content of the smoke that poured from the
chimney during the fire. These scrubbers were installed at great expense on the insistence of John
Cockcroft and were known as Cockcroft's Folly until the 1957 fire.
[42]
Of particular concern at the time was the radioactive isotope iodine-131, with a half-life of about
eight days. Iodine taken up by the human body is preferentially incorporated in the thyroid. As a
result, consumption of iodine-131 can give an increased chance of later suffering cancer of the
thyroid. In particular, children are especially at risk due to their thyroids not being fully
developed.
[7]
In the days following the disaster, tests were carried out on local milk samples, and
the milk was found to be dangerously contaminated with iodine-131.
[65]
It was thus decided that consumption of milk from the surrounding area should be stopped, and
eventually restrictions were put in place on the consumption of milk from the 200-square-mile
(520 km
2
) area surrounding the piles.
[66]
Milk from about 500 km
2
of nearby countryside was
destroyed (diluted a thousandfold and dumped in the Irish Sea) for about a month.
[7]
However, no
one was evacuated from the surrounding area.
The original report into the incident, the Penney Report, was ordered to be heavily censored by
prime minister Harold Macmillan.
[67][3]
Macmillan feared that the news of the incident would
shake public confidence in nuclear power and damage British-American nuclear relations.
[3]
 As a
result, information about the release of radioactive fallout was kept hidden by the government.
[3]
It was not until 1988 that Penney's report was released in full.
[68]
Partly because of this censorship, consensus on the extent of the long-term health impacts caused
by the radiation leak has changed over time as more information on the incident has come to
light.
[69]
The release of the highly dangerous radioactive isotope polonium-210, which had been
covered up at the time, was not factored into government reports until 1983, when it was
estimated that the fallout had caused 33 cancer fatalities in the long-term.
[69]
These deaths were attributed not only to thyroid cancer, but also to lung cancer.
[70]
 An updated
1988 UK government report (the most recent government estimate) estimated that 100 fatalities
"probably" resulted from cancers as a result of the releases over 40 to 50 years.
[71][72]
The
government report also estimated that 90 non-fatal cancers were caused by the incident, as well as
10 hereditary defects.
[71]
Other studies of additional cancer cases and mortality resulting from the radiological release have
produced differing results.
[73]
In 2007, the 50-year anniversary of the fire, new academic research
into the health effects of the incident was published by Richard Wakeford, a visiting professor at
the University of Manchester's Dalton Nuclear Institute, and by former UK Atomic Energy
Authority researcher John Garland.
[2]
Their study concluded that because the actual amount of
radiation released in the fire could be double the previous estimates, and that the radioactive
plume actually travelled further east, there were likely to be 100 to 240 cancer fatalities in the long
term as a result of the fire.
[3][2]