Historically in terms of accident usage, a primitive scrubber on a first generation gas cooled reactor, reduced the emission of radioisotopes from the Windscale fire in 1957.
[1] The modern concept of FCVS was born from the conclusions of the WASH-1400 report and the consequences of the Three Mile Island accident in the late 1970s, and its implementation in Western Europe was accelerated by the occurrence of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
It was realized that some accident scenarios would lead to substantial releases of radionuclides in the environment that were deemed unacceptable especially in countries in which nuclear power plants are close to population centers, such as Western Europe.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, FCVS were back-fitted to existing nuclear power plants in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland (except for the VVER at Loviisa).
After this accident many other countries decided to upgrade their power plants with FCVS, including Belgium, China, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Romania.