In 1935 at his annual birthday party/press meeting a 79-year-old Tesla related a story where he claimed a version of his mechanical oscillator caused extreme vibrations in structures and even an earthquake in downtown New York City. The nuclear power industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors, and has proposed new safer (but generally untested) reactor designs but there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built and operated correctly. Mistakes do occur and the designers of reactors at Fukushima in Japan did not anticipate that a tsunami generated by an unexpected large earthquake would. During a recent safety demonstration in China, a white Tesla Model 3 was shown slamming into a pedestrian dummy in a test of its AEB system. The electric sedan failed to notice the dummy.
How often do nuclear power plants go wrong? How many accidents and incidents are there?
The explosions and nuclear fuel rods melting at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, following the Sendai earthquake and tsunami last week, have caused fears of what will happen next. Today Japan's nuclear safety agency has raised the nuclear alert level for Japan from four to five - making it two levels lower than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
So far, the Japanese authorities have maintained that there is 'no cause to fear a major nuclear accident'.
We have identified 33 serious incidents and accidents at nuclear power stations since the first recorded one in 1952 at Chalk River in Ontario, Canada.
The information is partially from the International Atomic Energy Authority - which, astonishingly, fails to keep a complete historical database - and partially from reports. Of those we have identified, six happened in the US and five in Japan. The UK and Russia have had three apiece.
Using Google Fusion tables, we've put these on a map, so you can see how they're spread around the globe:
Get the fullscreen versionBut how serious are they? The International Atomic Energy Authority ranks them using a special International Nuclear Events Scale (INES) - ranging from 'anomaly' to 'major accident', numbered from 1 to 7.
The events at Fukushima are level 5, so far and there has only been one 7 in history: Chernobyl in 1986. You can see the full ranking system below and on the attached spreadsheet
What can you do with the data?
Incident | Country | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
2011 | Fukushima | 5 | Japan | Reactor shutdown after the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami; failure of emergency cooling caused an explosion |
2011 | Onagawa | Japan | Reactor shutdown after the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami caused a fire | |
2006 | Fleurus | 4 | Belgium | Severe health effects for a worker at a commercial irradiation facility as a result of high doses of radiation |
2006 | Forsmark | 2 | Sweden | Degraded safety functions for common cause failure in the emergency power supply system at nuclear power plant |
2006 | Erwin | US | Thirty-five litres of a highly enriched uranium solution leaked during transfer | |
2005 | Sellafield | 3 | UK | Release of large quantity of radioactive material, contained within the installation |
2005 | Atucha | 2 | Argentina | Overexposure of a worker at a power reactor exceeding the annual limit |
2005 | Braidwood | US | Nuclear material leak | |
2003 | Paks | 3 | Hungary | Partially spent fuel rods undergoing cleaning in a tank of heavy water ruptured and spilled fuel pellets |
1999 | Tokaimura | 4 | Japan | Fatal overexposures of workers following a criticality event at a nuclear facility |
1999 | Yanangio | 3 | Peru | Incident with radiography source resulting in severe radiation burns |
1999 | Ikitelli | 3 | Turkey | Loss of a highly radioactive Co-60 source |
1999 | Ishikawa | 2 | Japan | Control rod malfunction |
1993 | Tomsk | 4 | Russia | Pressure buildup led to an explosive mechanical failure |
1993 | Cadarache | 2 | France | Spread of contamination to an area not expected by design |
1989 | Vandellos | 3 | Spain | Near accident caused by fire resulting in loss of safety systems at the nuclear power station |
1989 | Greifswald | Germany | Excessive heating which damaged ten fuel rods | |
1986 | Chernobyl | 7 | Ukraine (USSR) | Widespread health and environmental effects. External release of a significant fraction of reactor core inventory |
1986 | Hamm-Uentrop | Germany | Spherical fuel pebble became lodged in the pipe used to deliver fuel elements to the reactor | |
1981 | Tsuraga | 2 | Japan | More than 100 workers were exposed to doses of up to 155 millirem per day radiation |
1980 | Saint Laurent des Eaux | 4 | France | Melting of one channel of fuel in the reactor with no release outside the site |
1979 | Three Mile Island | 5 | US | Severe damage to the reactor core |
1977 | Jaslovské Bohunice | 4 | Czechoslovakia | Damaged fuel integrity, extensive corrosion damage of fuel cladding and release of radioactivity |
1969 | Lucens | Switzerland | Total loss of coolant led to a power excursion and explosion of experimental reactor | |
1967 | Chapelcross | UK | Graphite debris partially blocked a fuel channel causing a fuel element to melt and catch fire | |
1966 | Monroe | US | Sodium cooling system malfunction | |
1964 | Charlestown | US | Error by a worker at a United Nuclear Corporation fuel facility led to an accidental criticality | |
1959 | Santa Susana Field Laboratory | US | Partial core meltdown | |
1958 | Chalk River | Canada | Due to inadequate cooling a damaged uranium fuel rod caught fire and was torn in two | |
1958 | Vinča | Yugoslavia | During a subcritical counting experiment a power buildup went undetected - six scientists received high doses | |
1957 | Kyshtym | 6 | Russia | Significant release of radioactive material to the environment from explosion of a high activity waste tank. |
1957 | Windscale Pile | 5 | UK | Release of radioactive material to the environment following a fire in a reactor core |
1952 | Chalk River | 5 | Canada | A reactor shutoff rod failure, combined with several operator errors, led to a major power excursion of more than double the reactor's rated output at AECL's NRX reactor |
Definition | Radiological barriers & control | Example | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
7 | Major accident | Major release of radio active material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures | Chernobyl, Ukraine, 1986 | ||
6 | Serious accident | Significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures. | Kyshtym, Russia, 1957 | ||
5 | Accident with wider consequences | Limited release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of | • Severe damage to reactor core. | Windscale, UK, 1957; Three Mile Island, 1979 | |
some planned countermeasures • Several deaths from radiation | • Release of large quantities of radioactive material within an installation | ||||
with a high probability of | |||||
significant public exposure. This | |||||
could arise from a major criticality accident or fire | |||||
4 | Accident with local consequences | • Minor release of radioactive material unlikely to result in implementation of planned countermeasures other than | • Fuel melt or damage to fuel resulting in more than 0.1% release of core inventory. | FUKUSHIMA 1, 2011 | |
local food controls. | • Release of significant quantities of radioactive | ||||
• At least one death from radiation. | material within an installation with a high probability of significant | ||||
public exposure. | |||||
3 | Serious incident | • Exposure in excess of ten times the statutory annual limit for workers. | • Exposure rates of more than 1 Sv/h in an operating area. | • Near accident at a nuclear power plant | Sellafield, UK, 2005 |
• Non-lethal deterministic health effect (e.g., burns) from radiation. | • Severe contamination in an area not expected by design, with a | with no safety provisions remaining. | |||
low probability | • Lost or stolen highly radioactive sealed source. | ||||
of significant public exposure. | • Misdelivered highly radioactive sealed source without adequate procedures in place to handle it. | ||||
2 | Incident | • Exposure of a member of the public | • Radiation levels in an operating area | • Significant failures in safety provisions | Atucha, Argentina, 2005 |
in excess of 10 mSv. | of more than 50 mSv/h. | but with no actual consequences. | |||
• Exposure of a worker in excess of the | • Significant contamination within the | • Found highly radioactive sealed | |||
statutory annual limits | facility into an area not expected by | orphan source, device or transport | |||
design | package with safety provisions intact. | ||||
• Inadequate packaging of a highly | |||||
radioactive sealed source. | |||||
1 | Anomaly | • Overexposure of a member of the | |||
public in excess of statutory annual | |||||
limits. | |||||
• Minor problems with safety | |||||
components with significant | |||||
defence-in-depth remaining. | |||||
• Low activity lost or stolen radioactive | |||||
source, device or transport package |
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