Bid To Save Uranium Furnace At Windscale

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28414, 22 October 1957, Page 13

Bid To Save Uranium Furnace At Windscale

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright/ (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, October 21. A flaring plan to save the £3m uranium furnace damaged in an accident at the Windscale atomic works, Cumberland, is being prepared by the factory chief, Mr Henry Davey, according to the “Daily Express” science writer, Chapman Pincher.

Pincher said the attempt would succeed only if several hundred volunteers came forward to enter the highly radioactive furnace in quick relays through a narrow underground tunnel. No atomic job of this magnitude has ever been attempted before, Pincher said.

Mr Davey would explain the plan to a four-man inquiry panel investigating the accident, 'ed by Sir William Penney, who would decide whether an attempt should be made to salvage the furnace The furnace could be repaired only by men working ’n airconditioned “space suits" behind metal shields thick enough to protect them from atomic rays. The shields would have 1o be taken in behind the furnace's concrete casing in sections and built there, Pincher said. The men. all recruited from Windscale scientists and workmen, would then inch forward towards the central horizontal channels pierced in the huge graphite core. Using remote control instruments like fishing rods, they would probe down the channels and attempt to extract damaged parts from the heart of the furnace.

Pincher said that because of the strict control over the amount of radiation the men could safely take, they would have to be given health checks every time they left the tunnel A similar, but. less ambitious plan by Mr Davey had saved the factory two years ago. but this time * the damage was much greater and the radioactivity far more intense, he said.