Britain's Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster You've Never Heard Of | Nuclear Winter | Timeline

4:35 I’d suggest Oppenheimer was far from ‘delighted’ when he saw the explosion, given he quoted part of a text from Hindu scriptures: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Further, he later went on to say “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.” Yup, definitely not ‘delighted’.

3:13 if the water supply fails on the reactor there will be very unpleasant experience, but it has nothing to do with "nuclear explosion"

Pretty sure the narrator is Tim Piggot Smith, his voice is just perfect for documentaries, never gets boring.

Misinformation/Errors: 1) Loss of coolant at the Hanford reactors would not have resulted in a “nuclear explosion”. That would’ve been physically impossible. A meltdown and possibly a steam explosion, yes—but NOT a nuclear explosion. 2) After the dropping of the 2nd bomb on Nagasaki, Japan did not immediately surrender. It almost took a third bomb. 3) Windscale was not the first serious accident, NRX was 4) Failure to mention the contribution to the risk of overheating by the improvised “solution” to a low neutron flux issue caused by addition of the neutron absorbing cartridges that were actually lithium isotope targets for the thermonuclear program. This rushed solution was the trimming of fuel element cooling fins enhance the neutron economy.

You speak of Los Alamos as "was", as though it is no longer in operation. It is still a government owned research and development area with high security and secret projects.

Living on the east coast of Ireland we were well aware of it!

I've never heard of Britain

I live in Richland, Washington, the town built to house the Hanford workers during, and just after, the war. The house we have is an “R” house - the designation assigned to one of the floor-plans used. The “B” Reactor is now open for tours, and I highly recommended anyone take a tour if they have the opportunity - it’s fascinating.

love this, but the windscale disaster was not the first nuclear accident....NRX reactor at Chalk River Laboratories was in 1952 and EBR-I "melt down" in 1951....but they also openly burned radioactive salt in an open sand pit too without even bothering to tell anyone (releasing almost 1 gigabecquerel)

I clicked to read about a Nuclear Disaster that I've never heard of, but it turned out to be Windscale, which seems to be quite well known. Maybe not as well known as Chernobyl, or Fukushima which is much more recent, but it must be in the Top 5 best known nuclear accidents.

I leaved near Hanford in WA. The stories about radiation damage to the people, abounded

Japan didn't "immediately surrender" after Nagasaki. They did not surrender for five more days, and the Emperor's speech was nearly stolen by a group of diehard fanatics who wanted to have him broadcast a fight-to-the-death message.

There was also one in Southern California, near Simi Valley, that was successfully covered up.

At 3:20 you say, if the reactors weren’t cooled, they would be an explosion like a bomb. But that’s incorrect. It wouldn’t be like a nuclear bomb, but like a dirty bomb where radioactive material would have been shut out over a great distance, but an actual splitting of the item would not have occurred like, a designed bomb.

Liked the footage of the not-to-often-seen “graphite boats” being removed from the refueling channels

Again, around 810 you’re wrong. The fissile material would not have gone critical and created a nuclear explosion. It’s not the case, rather, it would have gone critical, expanded its energy and created what could be called a dirty bomb.

I wish people who go to the effort of producing a documentary on nuclear reactors would stop spreading the absurd notion that a reactor overheating can turn it into an “atomic bomb.”

BIG CORRECTION! In 1952, an experimental nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., about 180 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, partially melted down, becoming the world's first nuclear reactor incident.

Having just watched a documentary that included the trial of Oppenheimer, Edward Teller was a real piece of ... work.

Don't they mean the first "large-scale" nuclear accident? Just developing the atom bomb there were several accidents, one of which ultimately took the lives of several of the Los Alamos scientists, and led to the development of some of the most sophisticated nuclear physics arithmetic of the modern age. Technically, these accidents were also nuclear in nature.