Thousands of tons of radioactive waste from the largest underground uranium mine in the United States spilled from a failed dam into the North Fork of New Mexico’s Puerco River in a disaster that likely released more radiation (but received far less media coverage) than the Three Mile Island incident four months earlier. The incident also eroded the American public’s faith in nuclear power. Although no official deaths or injuries were reported, there has been an ongoing controversy over whether the radiation released at Three Mile Island led to increased cancer and infant mortality rates in the region. On March 31, plant workers were able to address the problems and ended the threat of a meltdown. Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh ordered the evacuation of pregnant women and small children from the area. As radioactive steam began pouring out of the plant, word of the incident leaked to the outside world within days radiation levels were elevated over a four-county zone. Control room operators made critical errors as they struggled to contain the crisis, and by early morning the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees-just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. It began when a pressure valve in one of the reactors failed to close, allowing cooling water-contaminated with radiation-to drain into adjoining buildings. history took place at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a brand-new facility lauded for its state-of-the-art design, efficiency and affordability during an era of energy crises. The most infamous nuclear accident in U.S. Scientists estimate that, over the long term, radioactive fallout from the Windscale fire may have caused some 240 cases of cancer. While no evacuations occurred, officials prohibited the sale of milk from the affected area for roughly a month. The fire finally died out on October 12, but by that time a radioactive cloud was already spreading across the United Kingdom and Europe. With the reactor on the verge of collapse, plant operators risked their lives to fight the flames with cooling fans, carbon dioxide and water. Upon further inspection, they discovered that the reactor’s uranium-filled graphite core had caught fire. On October 10, 1957, workers conducting standard maintenance at the massive facility noticed rising temperatures. Windscale (October 10, 1957)ĭesigned to produce plutonium and other materials for the country’s burgeoning nuclear weapons program, Britain’s first nuclear reactor, known as Windscale, was built in northwest England in the late 1940s. The Mayak incident has come to be associated with the nearby town of Kyshtym because Ozyorsk did not appear on any official maps at the time. By that time, reports had surfaced of mysterious ailments, including people’s skin sloughing off from exposed body parts. A full week passed before the affected zone’s 10,000 residents were evacuated because the plant was shrouded in secrecy, they received no explanation for their abrupt and permanent resettlement. A plume of deadly particles swelled above Ozyorsk and the surrounding region, eventually spanning some 300 square miles. One of these, the Mayak nuclear fuel processing plant in the Russian town of Ozyorsk, became the site of a major disaster when the cooling system in a waste storage tank failed, causing the dried radioactive material it contained to overheat and explode. In the years following World War II, the Soviet Union constructed dozens of covert facilities-many of them hastily and shoddily built-in an effort to strengthen their nuclear arsenal. But when things go wrong, the results are nothing short of catastrophic.īelow, check out five of the most devastating nuclear accidents in history-what caused them, how they were contained (or not) and what happened after. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power can provide a relatively stable and environmentally friendly source of energy. Nuclear power kicked into gear in the 1950s, and today some 440 reactors dot the globe, providing an estimated 10 percent of the world's electricity.
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