Nuclear accident facts for kids
By now, the most serious nuclear accident has been the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Other serious nuclear accidents include the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, the Three Mile Island accident, the Windscale fire, the Mayak accident, and the SL-1 accident. These events are rare, but they can have serious effects on people and the environment.
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Fukushima Nuclear Accident
On March 11, 2011, a very strong earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. This natural disaster caused big problems at several nuclear power plants, including Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Daini, Onagawa, and Tōkai. All eleven (11) reactors at these plants automatically shut down, which is what they are designed to do in an earthquake.
However, at Fukushima Daiichi and Daini, the huge tsunami waves went over the seawalls. These waves destroyed the backup power systems, which were diesel generators. Losing power caused serious issues, including two large explosions at Fukushima Daiichi. This also led to radiation leaking into the environment. Because of this, over 200,000 people had to leave their homes.
One year after the accident, five deaths were linked to the Fukushima event, but none were caused by radiation. For example, one person died from the earthquake, and two people drowned in the tsunami.
Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. An explosion happened at the plant, releasing a lot of radioactive material into the air. This caused contamination in the areas around the plant.
This event is known as the worst nuclear accident in history. A cloud of radioactive fallout spread over parts of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland, and even eastern North America. Large parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly affected. More than 336,000 people had to be moved from their homes. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
The accident made many people worry about the safety of nuclear power. Plans for new nuclear plants were stopped. The Soviet government, which usually kept information secret, had to share more details about the accident. Even today, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus spend a lot of money and time cleaning up and providing health care because of Chernobyl. It is hard to know exactly how many people died because of this accident, partly because information was not always fully shared.
Three Mile Island Accident
On March 28, 1979, a serious accident happened at the Unit 2 nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, USA. Part of the reactor core melted down.
The Three Mile Island accident was the worst commercial nuclear power accident in American history. However, it did not cause any deaths or injuries to plant workers or people living nearby.
The accident unfolded over five days. Many groups, from local to federal, worked to understand the problem and decide if people needed to be evacuated. The full details of what happened were only found out much later. In the end, the reactor was brought under control. About 25,000 people lived near the island, but no one was hurt by radiation. A government report said that only about one extra cancer death might happen because of the accident.
However, the accident had big financial and public relations problems. The cleanup was slow and very expensive. It also made many people lose trust in nuclear power. Until the Chernobyl disaster seven years later, it was considered the world's worst civilian nuclear accident.
SL-1 Accident
The SL-1, or Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was an experimental nuclear reactor used by the United States Army. In January 1961, it had a steam explosion and a meltdown. This accident killed its three operators. The direct cause was a maintenance team improperly pulling out a single control rod. This is the only reported fatal reactor accident in the United States.
Windscale Fire
On October 10, 1957, a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, caught fire. This fire released a lot of radioactive material into the surrounding area. This event, called the Windscale fire, was considered the world's worst nuclear accident until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
The fire released a large amount of radioactive material. One concern was a radioactive substance called iodine-131. This substance has a short half-life of only 8 days, but it can be absorbed by the human body and stored in the thyroid gland. If this happens, it can lead to cancer of the thyroid.
No one was evacuated from the area. However, there was worry that milk might be dangerously contaminated. Milk from about 500 square kilometers of nearby countryside was destroyed for about a month.
Mayak Accident
Mayak is the name of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Russia. Working conditions at Mayak were very dangerous, and many accidents happened there. A very serious accident occurred in 1957.
The 1957 Kyshtym disaster happened when the cooling system for a tank of nuclear waste failed. This caused a non-nuclear explosion, which was as powerful as about 75 tons of TNT. This explosion released a huge amount of radiation. After this, at least 200 people died from radiation sickness. 10,000 people had to leave their homes, and 470,000 people were exposed to radiation.
Attacks on Nuclear Plants
Nuclear reactors can become targets during wars or conflicts. Over the past three decades, some nuclear facilities have been attacked:
- Between 1977 and 1979: Attacks happened on the Lemoniz Nuclear Power Plant in Spain while it was being built.
- In September 1980: Iran bombed the Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex in Iraq.
- In June 1981: An Israeli air strike destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research facility.
- In January 1982: Umkhonto we Sizwe attacked the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in South Africa while it was being built.
- Between 1984 and 1987: Iraq bombed Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant six times.
- In 1991: The U.S. bombed three nuclear reactors and a special facility in Iraq.
- In 1991: Iraq launched missiles at Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant.
- In September 2003: Israel bombed a Syrian reactor that was under construction.
Radiation Accidents
Radiation can be harmful to health, and there have been many accidents involving radiation sources:
- 17 deaths happened at the Instituto Oncologico Nacional of Panama between 2000 and 2001. Patients getting cancer treatment received too much radiation.
- 13 deaths occurred in a Radiotherapy accident in Costa Rica in 1996. 114 patients received too much radiation from a medical device.
- 11 deaths happened in a Radiotherapy accident in Zaragoza, Spain, in December 1990. Cancer patients getting treatment were affected.
- 10 deaths and 88 injuries happened in the Columbus radiotherapy accident between 1974 and 1976.
- 8 deaths occurred in a Radiation accident in Morocco in March 1984.
- 7 deaths happened in the Houston radiotherapy accident in 1980.
- 5 deaths and 13 injuries resulted from a Lost radiation source, Baku, Azerbaijan in October 1982.
- 4 deaths and 249 people seriously contaminated happened in the Goiânia accident in September 1987, from a lost radiation source.
- 4 deaths occurred in a Radiation accident in Mexico City in 1962.
- 3 deaths and ten injuries happened in Samut Prakarn, Thailand, in February 2000, when a radiation-therapy unit was taken apart.
- 1 death occurred in the Mayapuri radiological accident, India, in April 2010.
- 1 death happened due to a malfunction at RA2 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Related pages
Images for kids
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Following the 2011 Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster, authorities shut down the nation's 54 nuclear power plants. The Fukushima site remains radioactive, with some 30,000 evacuees still living in temporary housing, although nobody has died or is expected to die from radiation effects. The difficult cleanup job will take 40 or more years, and cost tens of billions of dollars.
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The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, a Japanese nuclear plant with seven units, the largest single nuclear power station in the world, was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007. Safety-critical systems were found to be undamaged by the earthquake.
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The abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, following the Chernobyl disaster. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.
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Dr. Joseph G. Hamilton was the primary researcher for the human plutonium experiments done at U.C. San Francisco from 1944 to 1947. Hamilton wrote a memo in 1950 discouraging further human experiments because the AEC would be left open "to considerable criticism," since the experiments as proposed had "a little of the Buchenwald touch."
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One of four example estimates of the plutonium (Pu-239) plume from the 1957 fire at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver, Colorado. Public protests and a combined Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Environmental Protection Agency raid in 1989 stopped production at the plant.
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Corroded and leaking 55-gallon drum, for storing radioactive waste at the Rocky Flats Plant, tipped on its side so the bottom is showing.
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The Hanford site represents two-thirds of USA's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960.
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On Feb. 14, 2014, at the WIPP, radioactive materials leaked from a damaged storage drum (see photo). Analysis of several accidents, by DOE, have shown lack of a "safety culture" at the facility.
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The 18,000 km2 expanse of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (indicated in red), which covers an area the size of Wales. The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991.
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Over 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted, in over a dozen different sites around the world. Red Russia/Soviet Union, blue France, light blue United States, violet Britain, black Israel, yellow China, orange India, brown Pakistan, green North Korea and light green Australia (territories exposed to nuclear bombs)
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Operation Crossroads Test Able, a 23-kiloton air-deployed nuclear weapon detonated on July 1, 1946.
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Radioactive materials were accidentally released from the 1970 Baneberry Nuclear Test at the Nevada Test Site.
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This handbill was distributed 16 days before the first nuclear device was detonated at the Nevada Test Site.
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The recovered thermonuclear bomb was displayed by U.S. Navy officials on the fantail of the submarine rescue ship U.S.S. Petrel after it was located in the sea off the coast of Spain at a depth of 762 meters and recovered in April 1966
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A sketch used by doctors to determine the amount of radiation to which each person had been exposed during the Slotin excursion
See also
In Spanish: Accidente nuclear para niños
