AIMS: The Windscale (UK) fire of 1957 carried radioactive fallout according to the then prevailing wind patterns, in a North-Easterly direction across the Nordic countries, toward Norway. The male:female ratio at birth (M/F) is known to be increased after parental exposure to ionising radiation due to foetal losses that affect female more than male pregnancies. This study was carried out in order to ascertain whether the Windscale fire had any effects on M/F and birth rates in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. METHODS: Annual live births by gender were obtained from a World Health Organization dataset. The null hypothesis was that there were no significant changes in M/F or in births in temporal association with the 1957 Windscale event in abovementioned countries. RESULTS: There were no significant effects on the UK and most of Scandinavia but there was a significant rise in M/F for Norway and Finland with an aggregate deficit of around 4000 births in each country. CONCLUSIONS: A recent study suggests that the plume from the reactor extended further east than previously believed. This study confirms that contamination from the Windscale fire had a negligible impact on the UK (as measured by birth effects) but had a significant impact on births in Norway and Sweden. Language: en

/pdf/births-and-male-female-birth-ratio-in-scandinavia-and-the-3ptezshpyd.pdf

Births and male:female birth ratio in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom after the Windscale fire of October 1957

Sixty years ago the first nuclear accidents to cause serious radioactive contamination of the environment occurred at two military installations—one in the then USSR closely followed by a second in the UK. The quantities of radionuclides released during these accidents were large enough to require the implementation of countermeasures to limit the consequent doses received by members of the public. At the Mayak nuclear complex in the Chelyabinsk Province of the Southern Urals of Russia, the cooling system in a highly radioactive liquid waste storage tank failed, which led to overheating of the tank contents. As a consequence, on 29 September 1957, a large chemical explosion occurred in the tank, forming an aerial plume of radioactive material that was blown to the northeast, contaminating an area stretching a substantial distance (∼300 km, with a width ∼50 km) beyond the Mayak site perimeter to create what became known as the East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT) [1–8]. Radioactive contamination was sufficiently severe in the worst affected areas of the EURT to necessitate the eventual evacuation of 10 730 people, 1154 within a fortnight of the accident because of high levels of environmental gamma radiation (‘groundshine’) from the deposition of relatively short-lived radionuclides (mainly Ce+Pr and Zr+Nb), and the remainder over the following two years because of the potential for unacceptable intakes of Sr in locally sourced foodstuffs. This accident is usually referred to as the ‘Kyshtym Accident’ because the town of Kyshtym is near Mayak, the establishment then being known cryptically as ‘Chelyabinsk-40’ (and later ‘Chelyabinsk-65’). The primary purpose of Mayak was the extraction of weapons-grade plutonium from uranium fuel that had been irradiated in a nuclear reactor. Then, less than a fortnight later, at Windscale Works, Sellafield, on the northwest coast of England, a low power annealing operation to release stored Wigner energy from the graphite moderator of an open-circuit air-cooled nuclear reactor (the ‘Windscale Pile No. 1’) led to a fire in the core of the reactor, which came to be known as the ‘Windscale Fire’—the accident occurred almost exactly seven years after Windscale Pile No. 1 commenced operations. On 10–11 October 1957, substantial quantities of radioactive materials from the reactor fire were uncontrollably discharged to atmosphere through a 120 m high chimney. During the accident, radiation exposure of the public was assessed to be below the level that warranted the evacuation of communities in the vicinity of Sellafield, but the contamination of pasture by radioiodine was sufficient to require a hastily derived limit of I (t1⁄2=8 days) in milk of 0.1 μCi l (3.7 kBq l) to be established, with the objective of restricting doses to the thyroid glands of children to less than 20 rads (200 mGy). The implementation of this limit resulted in a milk distribution ban eventually covering ∼600 farms in an area ∼500 km around Sellafield, with the ban lasting six weeks for farms in the worst affected area [1, 9–12]. Like Mayak, the principal function of Windscale was the production of weapons-grade plutonium. | Society for Radiological Protection Journal of Radiological Protection

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6498/aa7e87/pdf

A double diamond anniversary-Kyshtym and Windscale: the nuclear accidents of 1957.

Economic analysis of nuclear accidents and their aftermath is comparatively rare. In this paper, in the light of the Japanese government’s intensive efforts to decontaminate areas affected by radioactive Caesium from Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear power plant, we create a cost-benefit framework for assessing the merits of decontamination strategies. Using some benchmark data for Japan we estimate that optimal delay is positive for most reasonable parameter values. For low value land, optimal delay could be in excess of 30 years. For higher value, urban land, optimal delay generally lies in the range of 5-10 years.

/pdf/fukushima-dai-ichi-and-the-economics-of-nuclear-47ukzc3tvs.pdf

Fukushima Dai-Ichi and the Economics of Nuclear Decontamination

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a wider effort of establishing an environmental radiation baseline for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) before the startup of the country's first nuclear reactor in 2017. An investigation of gamma-emitting radionuclide concentrations in palm dates grown in the UAE was performed. Palm date samples of 10 varieties originating from several local commercial date palm farms of the UAE were collected and analyzed. The study targeted the naturally occurring radionuclides, such as U, Th, and K, in addition to any potential anthropogenic radionuclides, such as Cs and others. Gamma spectrometry revealed measured activity concentrations for U (Ra), Th (Ra), and K that ranged from 0.61 to 0.80 Bq kg, 0.10 to 0.23 Bq kg, and 191 to 362 Bq kg, respectively, on a dry-weight basis, and calculated activity concentrations on a wet basis ranged from 0.52 to 0.69 Bq kg, 0.09 to 0.22 Bq kg, and 168 to 297 Bq kg, respectively. No Cs or other anthropogenic radionuclides could be detected in this study. All measurements were performed using a coaxial HPGe detector with 40% relative efficiency quoted by the manufacturer. Efficiency calibration correction factors were calculated using Angle software.

Analysis of Natural and Anthropogenic Radionuclide Content in Palm Date Fruit of the United Arab Emirates: A Baseline Study.

There is nothing more important in nuclear engineering and nuclear power generation than safety. It is testament to this philosophy that related cultures of safety management and regulation have spread through neighbouring sectors such as oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and transport. In this chapter, the focus is on the context of nuclear safety particularly with regard to the hazard associated with radiation emitted by radioactive material and the risk, that is, the likelihood of harm accruing from the hazard. The concepts of defence in-depth, the precautionary principle, radiation dose, radiotoxicity and a summary of the corresponding nuclear accident terminology is provided.

Nuclear Safety and Regulation

This paper studies the mortality and cancer morbidity of the 470 male workers involved in tackling the 1957 Sellafield Windscale fire or its subsequent clean-up. Workers were followed up for 50 years to 2007, extending the follow-up of a previously published cohort study on the Windscale fire by 10 years. The size of the study population is small, but the cohort is of interest because of the involvement of the workers in the accident. Significant excesses of deaths from diseases of the circulatory system (standardised mortality ratio (SMR) = 120, 95% CI = 103–138; 194 deaths) driven by ischaemic heart disease (IHD) (SMR = 133, 95% CI = 112–157, 141 deaths) were found when compared with the population of England and Wales but not when compared with the population of Northwest England (SMR = 105, 95% CI = 90–120 and SMR = 115, 95% CI = 97–136 respectively). When compared with those workers in post at the time of the fire but not directly involved in the fire the mortality rate from IHD among those involved in tackling the fire was raised but not statistically significantly (rate ratio (RR) = 1.11, 95% CI = 0.92–1.33). A RR of 1.11 is consistent with an excess relative risk of 0.65 Sv − 1 as reported in an earlier study of non-cancer mortality in the British Nuclear Fuels plc cohort of which these workers are a small but significant part. There was a statistically significant difference in lung cancer mortality (RR = 2.18, 95% CI = 1.05–4.52) rates between workers who had received higher recorded external doses during the fire and those who had received lower external doses. Comparison of the mortality rates of workers directly involved in the accident with workers in post, but not so involved, showed no significant differences overall. On the basis of the use of a propensity score the average effect of involvement in the Windscale fire on all causes of death was − 2.13% (se = 3.64%, p = 0.56) though this difference is not statistically significant. The average effect of involvement in the Windscale fire was − 5.53% (se = 3.81, p = 0.15) for all cancers mortality and 6.60% (se = 4.03%, p = 0.10) for IHD mortality though neither figure was statistically significant. This analysis of the mortality and cancer morbidity experience of those Sellafield workers involved in the 1957 Windscale fire does not reveal any measurable effect of the fire upon their health. Although this study has low statistical power for detecting small adverse effects, due to the relatively small number of workers, it does provide reassurance that no significant health effects are associated with the 1957 Windscale fire even after 50 years of follow-up.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/30/3/001/pdf

Mortality and cancer registration experience of the Sellafield workers known to have been involved in the 1957 Windscale accident: 50 year follow-up

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

S Whaley

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Mortality and cancer registration experience of the Sellafield workers known to have been involved in the 1957 Windscale accident: 50 year follow-up