On the Brink of Nuclear Disaster - The Windscale Pile 1 Fire

...And a wonderful walk in the Lake District National Park.
In October 1957 the Windscale Pile 1 Nuclear Reactor suffered a nearly catastrophic failure: A fire spread from a fuel cartridge and compromised large parts of the graphite core. Several attempts were made to get the reactor under control, but, in the end, it was the Site manager, Tom Tuohy, who prevented the ultimate catastrophe by ordering the only remaining way out: Douse the flames with simple water. Heroically, he ordered all but the indispensable core people off site and personally oversaw this last effort. He was successful and saved a large part of northern England from becoming a radioactive no-go area, avoiding what would have been the world's first nuclear disaster.
On the insistence of John Cockroft, Nobel-Prize winning nuclear physicist at the site, high performance filters had been installed at the top of the stacks.
Without them, the pile 1 fire would have emitted ten times more radioactive particles into the air than it actually did. That would have been a deadly dose for many.
This is a video about nuclear technology in its infancy, about the sacrifices we have made during the cold war and about some unsung heroes who prevented a disaster without most people knowing about it at the time. We also learn why the Windscale Piles were built that way.
Today the place is known as Sellafield site. Its cleanup and decommissioning is estimated to last until the year 2120.