Re: The trouble with "failsafe"
"IIRC Windscale happened because someone thought it a good idea to have a reactor which basically worked like a coal fire, with a through air flow. Then the radioactive bits got hot and the carbon caught fire"
More or less. But remember that Windscale's _sole_ purpose was to produce plutonium to make nuclear weapons. The military (all militaries) has repeatedly played fast and loose with safety protocols when it's suited them to do so.
Bear _that_ in mind when you realise that the water moderated reactors we know and love are "modernised" and "safened" versions of an experimental nuclear reactor primarily designed as proof of concept - and whose inventor subsequently sat down and _built_ a new _intrinsically safe_ design with safety designed in at every stage of the process to ensure that operator abuse couldn't result in an accident of the kinds we've seen over the years and which didn't rely on bomb fuel to operate it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
