A person does not stop his rapid development for a second, innovative technical achievements open up new horizons for him. A breakthrough in all industries was the creation of nuclear power plants, which quite naturally created inconveniences with accidents and malfunctions. In this material you will find a list of all the most serious, destructive and large-scale man-made accidents that have most often occurred at nuclear power plants since 1944. Since that moment, there are 16 biggest incidents, which you can read about below.
Top 16 man-made accidents
1. September 1, 1944 due to the explosion of uranium hexafluoride at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, located in Tennessee, USA, hydrofluoric acid was formed. As a result, five people suffered from acid burns and inhalation of a mixture of acid and radioactive vapors at the facility. Three were seriously injured, and two could not be saved.
2. In the Soviet Union, the first major radiation accident happened four years later, June 19, 1948. It happened at facility "A" (Mayak plant, Chelyabinsk region.) after the release of the nuclear reactor for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, at the declared design capacity, literally the next day. The so-called "goat" was due to the local fusion of several uranium blocks with the graphite surrounding them. This happened due to insufficient cooling of these very blocks. Irradiation was received by all the male personnel of the reactor, and the soldiers of the construction battalions involved in the elimination of the accident. The "goaty" channel was manually cleared for nine days, by reaming.
3. March 3, 1949 About 124,000 people were exposed to radiation, and 41 settlements were affected. The tragedy happened as a result of a mass discharge of highly active liquid radioactive waste into the Techa River by the Mayak plant. The average individual dose of 210 m3v was received by 28,100 people who lived in the coastal settlements of the Techa River. Some of the victims had cases of chronic radiation sickness.
4. Day December 12, 1952 went down in history as the date of the world's first serious accident at a nuclear power plant. The reason for this was a technical error made by the personnel of the Chalk River Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario. Overheating and partial melting of the core occurred. The land near the Ottawa River absorbed about 3,800 cubic meters of radioactively contaminated water. Thousands of curies of fission products got into the environment.
5.November 29, 1955 through the fault of man the accident occurred at the American experimental reactor EBR-1, located in the US, Idaho. Due to the incorrect actions of the operator during the experiment with plutonium, the reactor self-destructed, and 40% of its core burned out.
6. September 29, 1957 there was a "Kashtym" accident. The incident happened in the Chelyabinsk region, where a container containing 20 million curies of radioactivity exploded at the Mayak Production Association. The power of the explosion was equal to the explosion of 70-100 tons of TNT. Then the East Ural radioactive trace was formed, which covered an area of more than 20 thousand square meters. km. Residents of the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk regions suffered from the radioactive cloud. More than five thousand people were subjected to single exposure to 100 roentgens in the first hours after the explosion, experts announced. Between 25,000 and 30,000 military personnel took part in the liquidation of the consequences of the catastrophe, classified in Soviet times, from 1957 to 1959.
7. October 10, 1957 there was a big accident in Windscale, UK. Due to an error made during the operation of one of the two reactors for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, the temperature of the fuel in the reactor increased sharply. A fire broke out in the core, which lasted 4 days. As a result of damage to 150 technological channels, radionuclides were released. 11 tons of uranium perished in the fire. The radioactive cloud reached the territory of Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Norway. A large area of Ireland and England was polluted.
8. In the spring of 1967, in April, again reminded of itself software "Mayak". An area of 1,800 square kilometers was contaminated with radioactive dust of about 600 Ku of activity. This happened as a result of the fact that Lake Karachay, used by Mayak as a dumping ground for dumping liquid waste, became very shallow. Because of this, 2-3 hectares of the coastal strip were exposed, and the same amount of the lake bottom. About 40 thousand people lived in the affected area.
9.In 1969 a cave was permanently walled up, contaminated with radioactive emissions after the accident of an underground nuclear reactor in Switzerland, in the city of Lucens. In the same year, 1969, there was an accident at the Saint Lawrence nuclear power plant in France. Due to the inattention of the night shift operator, the fuel channel was loaded incorrectly, which led to the explosion of the launched reactor, with a power of 500 MW. As a result, the elements overheated and melted, about 50 kg of liquid fuel leaked out.
10. January 18, 1970 there was a disaster at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant located in Nizhny Novgorod. The incident happened during the construction of the nuclear submarine K 320. As a result of the unauthorized launch of the reactor, which worked at exorbitant power for about 15 seconds, the zone of the workshop where the ship was being built was contaminated. About 1,000 people were in the shop at the time of the accident. Due to the closeness of the workshop, it was possible to avoid radioactive contamination of the area. Many workers were sent home that day without proper medical attention and decontamination treatment. Three of the six delivered to the Moscow hospital died from acute radiation sickness, the rest gave a non-disclosure subscription for 25 years. More than a thousand people took part in the work to eliminate the accident until April 24, 1970. Only 380 of them were still alive by January 2005.
11. The fire at the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama, USA, cost $10 million. There was this fire that lasted seven hours March 22, 1975. It all happened due to the fact that a worker, with a lit candle in his hands, decided to close up an air leak in a concrete wall. Due to the draft, the fire spread through the cable channel. This incident put the nuclear power plant out of action for a whole year.
12. The accident at the Trimal Island nuclear power plant has become the largest in the United States. It happened March 28, 1979 in the state of Pennsylvania. Due to gross errors of operators and a series of equipment failures, the core of the second power unit of the nuclear power plant was melted by 53%. 200 thousand people were evacuated from the affected area. In addition, inert radioactive gases, iodine and xenon, were released into the atmosphere. 185 cubic meters of weakly radioactive water got into the Sukuahana River.
13. The biggest nuclear accident in history, occurred on the night of 25 to 26 April 1986 . In Ukraine, at the fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the reactor core was partially destroyed, fission fragments went beyond the zone. Experts say that this happened due to an experiment attempt to remove additional energy during the operation of the main reactor. 190 tons of radioactive substances entered the atmosphere. 8 out of 140 tons of radioactive fuel were in the air. As a result of the fire, which lasted almost two weeks, other hazardous substances continued to leave the reactor. The population of Chernobyl experienced 90 times more radiation than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Everything within a radius of 30 km was subjected to radioactive contamination. The total area of pollution is 160 thousand square kilometers. Belarus, northern Ukraine and western Russia were affected by the accident. The territory of 60 thousand square kilometers, which included 19 Russian regions with a population of 2.6 million people, was polluted.
14. The biggest nuclear accident in Japanese history happened September 30, 1999 . Due to a mistake by personnel at a plant that specializes in the manufacture of fuel for nuclear power plants in the town of Tokaimura, located in the prefecture of Ibaraki, an uncontrolled chain reaction began that lasted 17 hours. A dose exceeding the annual allowable level was received by 119 people. A total of 439 workers were irradiated. Of the three people who received a critical dose, two died.
15. August 9, 2004 320 kilometers west of Tokyo, on the island of Honshu, an accident occurred at the Mihama nuclear power plant. A super-powerful release of hot steam (about 200 degrees Celsius) occurred in the turbine of the third reactor. All nearby employees received severe burns. At the time of the accident, about 200 people were in the building where the third reactor is located. 4 people died and 18 others were injured. No leaks of radioactive materials were found. According to the number of victims, this accident was the most serious in Japan.
16. As a result of the most powerful earthquake in the history of Japan March 11, 2011 , A turbine at the Onagawa nuclear power plant was destroyed. The resulting fire was quickly extinguished. The situation at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant was much more serious, where, due to the shutdown of the cooling system, nuclear fuel melted in the reactor of block No. 1. In connection with the detected leak outside the block, an evacuation was carried out in a 10-kilometer zone around the nuclear power plant. The next day, the NHK broadcaster showed pictures showing the collapsed wall of the nuclear power plant, where the explosion was reported by the media.
