The Windscale accident at the tail end of 1957, mostly forgotten now, occurred in a military reactor but had implications for Britain’s upcoming generation of gas cooled power reactors. I chuckled when I read this turn of phrase from John Cockcroft, writing to the chairman of one of a few inquiries into the whole affair. What Cockcroft is referring to here is how to find out if a metal can containing fissile uranium leaks or splits apart, to find out before this escalates into a full-blown fire as occurred in Windscale Pile No. 1:
So I am sure we will need to have a new burst slug detection gear and possibly a new design of cartridge before we could start up, and be quite sure of not upsetting the countryside again on some lesser scale.
Cockcroft, John. 1957. Cockcroft to Flett, Nov. 11, 1957. AB 16/2697. National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom.
