nuclear safety

Measures to avoid accidents in the operation of nuclear reactors and in the production and disposal of nuclear weapons and of nuclear waste. There are no guarantees of the safety of any of the various methods of disposal. Nuclear safety is a controversial subject – some governments do not acknowledge the hazards of atomic radiation and radiation sickness.

Nuclear accidents

Ticonderoga, 130 km/80 mi off the coast of Japan. In 1965 a US Navy Skyhawk jet bomber fell off the deck of this ship, sinking in 4,900 m/16,000 ft of water. It carried a one-megaton hydrogen bomb. The accident was only revealed in 1989.

Three Mile Island, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1979 a combination of mechanical and electrical failure, as well as operator error, caused a pressurized water reactor to leak radioactive matter.

Church Rock, New Mexico, USA. In July 1979, 380 million litres/100 million gallons of radioactive water containing uranium leaked from a pond into the Rio Purco, causing the water to become over 6,500 times as radioactive as safety standards allow for drinking water.

Chernobyl, Ukraine. In April 1986 there was an explosive leak, caused by overheating, from a nonpressurized boiling-water reactor, one of the largest in Europe. The resulting clouds of radioactive material spread as far as the UK. Thirty-one people were killed in the explosion, and thousands of square kilometres of land were contaminated by fallout. By June 1992, seven times as many children in the Ukraine and Belarus were contracting thyroid cancer as before the accident, and the incidence of leukaemia was rising; it was estimated that more than 6,000 people had died as a result of the accident, and that the death toll in the Ukraine alone would eventually reach 40,000.

Tomsk, Siberia, Russia. In April 1993 a tank exploded at a uranium reprocessing plant, sending a cloud of radioactive particles into the air.

Sellafield is the world's greatest discharger of radioactive waste, followed by Hanford, Washington, USA.