WINDSCALE ATOM ACCIDENT Radioactivity In Cumberland

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28541, 21 March 1958, Page 16

WINDSCALE ATOM ACCIDENT Radioactivity In Cumberland

( Special Correspondent N Z.P A. ) LONDON, March 20. The quantity of radioactivity released by Windscale reactor in Cumberland during an accident in October was probably considerably more than that released during an explosion of an atomic bomb of the Hiroshima type, says the “Manchester Guardian’s” scientific correspondent, commenting on statements made by Sir John Cockcroft, the director of the Harwell atomic research station, in an address to civil engineers. “Sir John said about three tons of uranium were burned up during the accident,” says the correspondent. “The quantity of radioactive fission product contained in this metal cannot be told exactly without a detailed knowledge of the fuel, but it is unlikely to have been less than one-tenth of 1 per cent, by weight. This would imply that only oneseventh of naturally-occurring fissile uranium in metal had been burnt when the accident occurred.

“This arithmetic implies that something like three kilograms of fission products must have been released altogether during the accident. This is at least 10 times as much as the weight of the fission products in a normal atomic bomb explosion. “Since it appears that at Windscale only radioactive iodine escaped from the reactor stack the amount of radioactivity scattered about the surrounding countryside is unlikely to have been more than one-tenth of that available for scattering inside the reactor.

“By this argument Cumberland appears to have been subjected to radiation equivalent to that from a single small bomb,” the correspondent says.