Thermodynamic Relations of Windscale Fire Disaster: A Case Study on the

Windscale Piles Failure

A Case Study presented to the

Department of Chemical and Food Engineering
Batangas State University

In partial fulfillment to
Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics I
ChE 307

Aldovino, John Bryan A.

Gutierrez, Rica Ann C.
Pasajol, Nica T.

ChE-3202
May 2017
Introduction

Wars are known to be a factor in the destruction of buildings and

infrastructure. It also takes the lives of many people that happened to be in the

place where the wars happened. So in order to be invulnerable and mighty at the

face of war, many nations began to build their powerful weapons using their

advancement in technology. This lead to the construction of a nuclear plant in

Great Britain, in the northwest coast of England in Cumberland.

After the Second World War, the British government embarked on a

program to build nuclear weapons. At the time, the British Government was

currently manufacturing uranium-based weapons however, due to its low

performance compared to the weapons of other nations, they decided to make

weapons that are based in plutonium and a plutonium-breeding reactor system

was designed to produce this material. The design was based on the graphite-

moderated B Reactor built at the Hanford Site, which was known to British

physicists who had been involved in the Manhattan Project during the war. The

reactors were built in a short time near the village of Seascale, Cumberland.

They were known as Windscale Pile 1 and Pile 2, housed in large concrete

buildings a few hundred feet apart. Due to the failure in the reactor core which

was subjected to a sudden heating, a disaster is known to have occured and the

windscale pile caught fire.

Statement of the Problem

This case study seeks to determine the thermodynamic relations of

windscale fire disaster at the Cumberland, United Kingdom and a review to the

viable solutions to the sudden heating that occurred in the incident.

In lieu with this, the researchers sought to establish answers to the

following questions:

1. What is the major relation of Wigner Effect on the sudden heating of the

Windscale Piles?

2. What are the viable solutions to be applied in the sudden heating of

graphite-moderated reactor core in the nuclear plant?

3. What are the Thermodynamic relations of the Windscale Pile failure in

terms of:

a. Enthalpy

b. Heat of Combustion

c. Heat Transfer
Related Literature and Study

Nuclear and Radiation Accidents and Incidents

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a nuclear

and radiation accident is an event that has led to significant consequences to

people, the environment or the facility such as lethal effects to individuals, huge

amount of radioactivity release to the environment, and/or a reactor core melt.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 is one of the major example of a nuclear

accidents in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of

radioactivity are emitted. Such accidents lead to a great impact which has been a

subject of discussion since the first nuclear reactors were made in 1954 and has

been a key factor in public concern about nuclear facilities.

Chernobyl Disaster

A disastrous nuclear accident occurred on April 26, 1986 in the No.4 light

water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power

Plant near Pripyat. A sudden and unexpected power increase has occurred at

around 01:23 (UTC+3), and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a

much larger spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture

and a series of steam explosions in its core. This emitted a large amounts of

radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere and exposed the graphite moderator of

the reactor to air which caused an ignition resulting to an open-air fire. This

accident directly killed 31 people and damaged approximately $7 billion of

property. A study published in 2005 estimates that there will eventually be up to

4,000 additional cancer deaths related to the accident among those exposed to

significant radiation levels. Approximately 350,000 people were forcibly resettled

away from these areas soon after the accident.

Nuclear Reactor

A device used to initiate and control a sustained nuclear reaction is called

a nuclear reactor, also known as atomic pile. Nuclear reactors are used

at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in propulsion of ships. Heat

from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid (water or gas), which runs

through steam turbines. These either drive a ship's propellers or turn electrical

generators. Nuclear generated steam in principle can be used for industrial

process heat or for district heating. Some reactors are used to

produce isotopes for medical and industrial use, or for production of weapons-

grade plutonium. Some are run only for research. As of April 2014, the IAEA

reports there are 435 nuclear power reactors in operation, in 31 countries around

the world.

B Reactor

The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, near Richland, Washington, was the first

large-scale nuclear reactor ever built. The project was commissioned to

produce plutonium-239 by neutron activation as part of the Manhattan Project,

the United States nuclear weapons development program during World War II.
The B reactor was fueled with metallic natural uranium, graphite moderated, and

water-cooled. It has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark since

August 19, 2008 and in July 2011 the National Park Service recommended that

the B Reactor be included in the Manhattan Project National Historical

Park commemorating the Manhattan Project. Visitors can take a tour of the

reactor by advance reservation.

Wigner Energy and Wigner Release

In 1942 E. P. Wigner suggested that irradiations might affect the graphite

moderator of a nuclear reactor. He suggested that fast neutrons would displace

atoms from their normal positions and so produce lattice defects in the form of

holes in the carbon networks and interstitial atoms intercalated between the layer

planes of the graphite. The interstitial atoms would cause an increase in the inter-

layer spacing and so cause the graphite to grow. Lattice strains produced by the

defects would increase the internal energy of the graphite. This increase in

internal energy or stored energy (known also as the Wigner effect) might, if it

were suddenly released, cause a spontaneous rise in temperature of the graphite

component.
Discussion and Solution to the Problem

This chapter of the case study intends to discuss the thermodynamic

relations of the Windscale Pile Failure incident and the viable solutions that

would be proposed for future construction of the same model or purpose of this

type of nuclear plant.

Discussion

The Windscale Pile Failure is mainly caused by a sudden overheating of

the graphite-moderated reactor core inside the Windscale Pile. Graphite when

bombarded with neutrons excites the carbon atoms that lies on its lattice thus

resulting to the deformation of the crystalline structure of the graphite. There

would also be active atoms outside its lattice location which will cause a sudden

rise in temperature of the graphite. This was the incident that happened on

October 7, 1957 which they came to a solution of undergoing in a process called

annealing i.e., graphite is heated at 250 deg C and above where the excited

atoms will comeback to its normal state. However, since these bombardments of

neutrons and periodic annealing of the graphite-moderated reactor causes the

graphite to be irradiated meaning, there would be an accumulation of internal

energy or stored energy which at times could sudden be released thus a sudden

rise in temperature, would affect the thermal capacity of the graphite and could

also potentially light the nuclear fuels on fire which happened in the case of the

Windscale Pile disaster.

Figure 1. Windscale graphite-moderated air-cooled piles with cooling

towers (left) and ventilation stacks (right) with air filters on top

Figure 2. Loading face platform of the Windscale reactors

 Figure 3. Aluminum-clad uranium fuel elements used in the Windscale

reactors

Solution

The stored energy in graphite is due to lattice strain-stress introduced due

to irradiation damage, and excludes the elastic strain energy due to localized

deformation by the applied load. Stored energy has two important practical

effects. First, following irradiations at temperatures below ~150 C, it is possible

to reach a state in which a small temperature rise can be followed by a much

larger rise due to the sudden release of stored energy. Graphite irradiated at ~30

C, for instance, and then heated to 70 C can rise rapidly in temperature to ~400

C, which is approximately that required for thermal oxidation in the presence of

oxygen. Second, in the case of graphite irradiated at higher temperatures, the

presence of stored energy reduces the heat capacity and hence affects the

progress of any transient temperature condition. In other words, the presence of

stored energy can be responsible for, or seriously modify, the progression of a

graphite reactor accident.12 Therefore, monitoring of the stored energy in

graphite reactors is a routine practice when the operating temperature is low,

because of the effects it has on the thermal capacity of the moderator in accident

situations.
Conclusion

This chapter intends to answer the problems stated at the beginning of the

research paper entitled Thermodynamic Relations of Windscale Fire

Disaster: A Case Study on the Windscale Piles Failure.

1. Wigner Effect is manifested at the continuous bombardment of neutrons

on graphite-moderated reactor cores, which in time would accumulate stored

energy. This energy could cause a sudden rise in temperature, thus a plausible

fire could happen inside the nuclear plant which was the case and the major

cause of Windscale Fire Accident.

2. Stored energy is one that can control the heat capacity in the reactor.

This must be then monitored for the temperature to be maintained to avoid

overheating of the core reactor and meltdown. Rate of heat transfer must also be

monitored for heat not to accumulate in a certain part of the reactor.

3. A. Enthalpy

Enthalpy has a vital role in the monitoring of the stored energy of

the reactor core. Isothermally, one section is measured T1 and its

equivalent enthalphy, and then another section T2 is measured along with

its corresponding T2. The area under the curve of the heating graph is the

calculated heat amount in the of the stored energy.

 B. Heat of Combustion

Enginers or reactors utilize chemical processes for internal

combustion. Inefficiency of it might lead to an amount of heat unused. The

value of heat of combustion might have been too high that lead to

overheating of the Windscale Pile

C. Heat Transfer

Heat transfer is occurring in the reactor core especially in

undergoing the reactor to a process called annealing. In this process, the

core is heated at 250 deg C to calm its deformation and atoms that are in

excited state and not its lattice. Heat transfer could also occur suddenly

from the stored energy to the outside where there could be conduction,

convection or radiation to its adjacent equipment and parts. With this,

there would be an overheating and inefficiency to the reactor and the

nuclear fuel inside could catch fire. This certain thing happened to the

Windscale Pile accident.