Nuclear and radiation accidents facts for kids

During the 2011 Fukushima nuclear emergency in Japan, three nuclear reactors were damaged by explosions.

The abandoned city of Prypiat, Ukraine, after the Chernobyl disaster. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.

Nuclear disasters are serious events that happen at places like nuclear power plants or other facilities that use radioactive materials. These accidents can release harmful radiation into the environment. This page lists some of the most serious nuclear accidents that have happened around the world.

One of the worst nuclear accidents was the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It happened in Ukraine. This accident directly caused 30 deaths. It also caused about $7 billion in property damage. A study from 2005 estimated that up to 4,000 more cancer deaths might be linked to the accident. These deaths would be among people exposed to high radiation levels. Radioactive fallout spread across parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. About 350,000 people had to move away from these areas soon after the accident.

Some very serious nuclear accidents have also happened with nuclear submarines. These accidents often involved many deaths. So far, all these submarine accidents happened with units from the former Soviet Union.

Understanding Nuclear Accidents

Why Accidents Happen: Normal Accidents Theory

A book called "Normal Accidents" was written in 1984 by Charles Perrow. He was a sociologist from Yale. His book looked closely at how complex systems work. He was the first to describe how risky complex systems like nuclear power plants can be. Perrow explained that many unexpected problems are built into complex systems. These systems are also tightly connected. This means one small problem can quickly lead to bigger ones. Such accidents are hard to prevent, even with good design.

Perrow got the idea for his book from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. In this event, a nuclear accident happened because many small failures happened at once. These failures interacted in unexpected ways. This accident was a "normal accident" because it was surprising and hard to control. It also seemed unavoidable.

Perrow's ideas are based on three main points. First, people make mistakes, even in nuclear plants. Second, big accidents almost always start from very small issues. Third, many failures are due to how organizations work, not just the technology. These ideas are still important today.

Major Nuclear Power Plant Accidents

Nuclear Submarine Accidents

Some of the most serious nuclear accidents have happened on nuclear submarines. All of these have involved submarines from the former Soviet Union. These accidents often caused damage to the reactor core. They also released radioactivity. Here are some examples:

• K-8, 1960: This submarine had a loss-of-coolant accident. A lot of radioactivity was released.
• K-14, 1961: The reactor part was replaced due to problems with its safety systems.
• K-19, 1961: A loss-of-coolant accident led to 8 deaths. More than 30 other people were exposed to too much radiation. The movie K-19: The Widowmaker tells this story.
• K-11, 1965: Both reactors were damaged during refueling. The reactor parts were sunk in the Kara Sea in 1966.
• K-27, 1968: One of its reactors was damaged. This caused 9 deaths and 83 injuries. It was sunk in the Kara Sea in 1982.
• K-140, 1968: The reactor was damaged after its power increased on its own during shipyard work.
• K-429, 1970: An uncontrolled start-up of the reactor led to a fire and radioactivity release.
• K-116, 1970: A loss-of-coolant accident happened in the port reactor. A lot of radioactivity was released.
• K-64, 1972: The first Alfa-class reactor failed. The reactor part was scrapped.
• K-222, 1980: This submarine had a reactor accident during maintenance. This happened while the crew was away.
• K-123, 1982: The Alfa-class submarine's reactor core was damaged by a coolant leak. The submarine was out of service for eight years.
• K-431, 1985: A reactor accident during refueling caused 10 deaths. 49 other people suffered radiation injuries.
• K-219, 1986: An explosion and fire happened in a missile tube. This led to a reactor accident. A 20-year-old sailor, Sergei Preminin, gave his life to secure one of the reactors. The submarine sank three days later.
• K-192, 1989: This submarine had a loss-of-coolant accident. It was reclassified from K-131.

Radiotherapy Accidents

Radiotherapy uses radiation to treat diseases like cancer. But sometimes, accidents can happen with these machines or radioactive sources. These accidents can cause serious harm or even death if people get too much radiation.

Images for kids

• 

  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.

• 

  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."

• 

  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.

• 

  Corroded and leaking 55-gallon drum, for storing radioactive waste at the Rocky Flats Plant, tipped on its side so the bottom is showing.

• 

  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.

• 

  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.

• 

  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.

• 

  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)

• 

  Operation Crossroads Test Able, a 23-kiloton air-deployed nuclear weapon detonated on July 1, 1946.

• 

  Radioactive materials were accidentally released from the 1970 Baneberry Nuclear Test at the Nevada Test Site.

• 

  This handbill was distributed 16 days before the first nuclear device was detonated at the Nevada Test Site.

• 

  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

• 

  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