It is not entirely clear what happened in the Windscale reactor fire. The Windscale reactor has not yet been entirely dismantled, so how much damaged was done to its core graphite is still open to question. There is little doubt that metals in the core - Aluminum and Uranium - burned.
The hastily prepared 1957 Penney report stated that the Windscale core graphite caught fire, but did it? When
The UK Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC) meet in 2009 to examine evidence from the Windscale reactor, it found,
• Inspections have shown that there was NOT a graphite fire: damage to graphite, caused by severely overheated fuel assemblies, was localised.
The NuSAC report added,
Some members of NuSAC may be aware that recent attempts to burn GLEEP graphite (block form) in a high temperature incinerator succeeded only in making it hot.
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