Once upon a time, people believed that nuclear energy would one day solve all of humanity's energy problems. From nuclear power plants to airliners that need to be recharged every 22 years, since World War II, great atomic discoveries have come alongside renewable energy. Under certain conditions, the energy of the atom can be quite safe and give heat to millions of people a year. But sometimes this warmth can be unbearable.
Throughout the history of mankind, the lives of many people have been lost due to unpleasant events associated with nuclear energy.
Texas incident
The worst harbor explosion in US history occurred on April 16, 1947. The French freighter Grandcamp transported a cargo of ammonium nitrate, which is commonly used as fertilizer and to produce explosives used in nuclear weapons.
A lit cigarette thrown by one of the dock workers set off a fire at the loading dock. It quickly spilled over into one of Grandcamp's cargo holds and ignited the ammonium nitrate.
The ship's captain ordered hatches to be closed to contain the fire, but the rise in temperature only improved the conditions for the volatile chemical to explode. The High Flyer, a sulfur-carrying vessel nearby, was also affected and exploded a day later due to the fires caused by the Grandcamp explosion.
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Poisonous gas quickly filled the air over the city. Unfortunately, it so happened that at the same time the workers of the telephone operator were on strike, so the ambulance workers could not quickly pick up the victims of toxins in the air. More than 500 people died as a result of this incident, including 28 firefighters involved in extinguishing the fire at the dock.
As a result of this event, new security measures were introduced to ensure the safe transport of ammonium nitrate. The docks now have a central response system to quickly respond to emergencies, and shipping companies are required to use special sealed containers and keep chemicals away from other hazardous materials.
Titan II rocket explosion
On September 18, 1980, a rocket explosion occurred near the city of Damascus in Arkansas. It happened because a member of the repair team threw a 4-kg pipe from the rocket platform and punctured the lower fuel tank of the rocket. David Powell violated a US Air Force technical order to use a torque wrench instead of a previously used ratchet when making repairs. As soon as the pilots saw a leak of fuel vapor in the bunker, all crew members were evacuated to the surface.
Dave Livingston and Jeffrey Kennedy, two expert repairmen, were called to the bunker to check for damage to the missile. They went inside and found that the oxidizer tank was rapidly losing pressure. They returned to the surface and opened the bunker to let gas in. A few minutes later, the bunker exploded and sent the missile warhead into the air.
After a day of searching, a 12-kiloton bomb was found several hundred meters from the explosion site and was picked up by the American military. The missile itself was the largest nuclear weapon in the US arsenal and could cause an explosion 600 times larger than at Hiroshima. Livingston was wounded by an explosion and died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Another 21 people were also injured.
David Powell was later demoted for breaking protocol. Until that day, he did not consider himself guilty of what had happened. Later, the government will declare that human error is to blame.
Palomar hydrogen bomb incident
On January 17, 1966, twelve B-52 bombers were carrying hydrogen bombs to Allied countries in Europe as part of a military exercise called Operation Chrome Dome. The goal was to prepare for the first confrontation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
One of the bombers collided with the KC-135 tanker, which was trying to refuel in the air over the southern coast of Spain. The accident caused both planes to be covered with fuel, and they burst into flames and exploded. Although several people were able to parachute safely to the ground, the explosion killed seven. Airplane wreckage fell on Palomares, a seaside farming village in southern Spain.
The local population did not realize that the debris would spread radioactive plutonium throughout the area, contaminating the land and water supplies of the entire city. Three bombs were immediately recovered. The fourth could not be found for three months, right up to April 7, 1966.
For the first time in history, the US military showed the public a nuclear weapon. Population screening revealed some traces of radiation, and cancer rates were similar to those seen in other cities in the area. Since the discovery of soil contamination in 2006, the US government has finally agreed to help Spain rebuild. The issue could not be resolved immediately.
Kyshtym nuclear incident
The Kyshtym incident ranks third in the list of the largest nuclear disasters. It happened in the city of Mayak in the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union on September 29, 1957, at the height of the Cold War.
The Mayak plant produced six materials needed to develop weapons-grade plutonium. At that time, the USSR did not inform its workers about the serious possibility of radiation poisoning by radioactive materials.
At that time, the plant used the labor of local prisoners to dispose of waste, dumping it into the Techa River. The surrounding residents did not know about the infection, until one of the local men received serious burns and, as a result, amputation of his legs.
Thyroid cancer rates in this region are now three times higher than in comparable areas. To this day, people there suffer from birth defects, radiation burns, and seven rare forms of cancer that are not usually seen in the country's population.
The USSR did not give any warning to people for many years after the initial pollution, and Russian regulators did not maintain the plant or protect the civilian population. The plant technicians did not notice a structural failure in one of the cooling systems, which caused a chain reaction.
On September 29, 1957, a cooling problem led to a violent explosion in one of the radioactive waste tanks. The explosion spread radioactive material over the area where about 300,000 people lived.
The Soviet leadership evacuated only 10,000 people from the area. The rest were left to "look". Declassified Russian documents later presented this as Muslyumov's experiment.
Many people living in this area are still fighting for the right to resettlement. Due to political ignorance and human error, the Lighthouse and its surrounding area is considered the most polluted place on Earth.
Tokaimur nuclear accident
A Japanese nuclear fuel reprocessing company has set up a reprocessing plant near Tokaimura to produce enriched uranium for the plant's nuclear reactor. Three technicians were assigned to prepare the fuel and fill the tank.
Fuel of this type had not been produced at the plant for three years, and the technicians had no qualifications to work as intended. This lack of knowledge and experience led to one of the worst accidents in the history of industrial Japan.
The technicians unknowingly overflowed the sediment reservoir, which had a maximum capacity of 2.4 kilograms. When the mass reached a critical threshold, the tank was filled with 16 kilograms of uranium.
A negative reaction began, which produced a brief blue flash. All three technicians received an immediate lethal dose of radiation. The reservoir also began spewing radioactive substances yttrium-94 and barium-140 into the air above the plant.
Two technicians in charge died from radiation burns and exposure to gamma radiation. The rest of the team managed to empty the tank and replace the cooling materials with boric acid, which returned the uranium to sub-critical levels. The civilians were evacuated within two days, and the Japanese authorities worked diligently to clear the area.
Windscale accident
The worst nuclear disaster in Europe occurred on October 10, 1957 in Cumbria, United Kingdom. The Windscale facility used a nuclear reactor system that was controlled by graphite.
Built in 1951, the station was intended to produce atomic weapons for the British government. On the morning of October 8, 1957, station engineers noticed that one of the systems was cooling down and did not match operating temperature.
They used the Wigner cycle, which reused captured energy from the reactor to cool and heat the reactor. The test was successful. But two days later, the engineers noticed that the temperature in the reactor was again incorrect and decided to heat the reactor. They did not know that the first reactor was on fire. Using a system that pumped oxygen into the reactor, they simply fanned the fire.
The fire raged for three days. Conventional methods such as water could not be used as water is oxidized by radioactive materials and can cause further damage to the structure.
Finally, the engineers realized that the fire would lose its oxygen feed if the hatch at the top of the first reactor's chimney was closed. This was done, and the fire was successfully stopped after 24 hours. There were no casualties.
However, it was later revealed that some pollution had reached the UK and caused an increase in thyroid cancer rates. The reactor has since been sealed and shut down, but the British government has ruled that the station cannot be completely shut down until 2060.
The B-52 case at Goldsboro
On January 24, 1961, a B-52 bomber with two atomic bombs Mk 39 of 4 megatons each was supposed to refuel over the Air Force base. Seymour Johnson. The B-52 met with an air tanker over Goldsboro, North Carolina, northeast of the base.
The tanker's crew noticed that the B-52 was oozing fuel from the right wing, and the bomber was ordered to return to base. On the approach to the runway, a serious leak in the fuel tank led to serious mechanical damage, leaving the plane uncontrolled at an altitude of 3000 meters.
On landing, the plane fell apart and dropped two bombs into the environment. Three crew members died in the accident. The rest landed safely. The Air Force immediately dispatched search teams to find the missing bombs.
Both bombs were quickly recovered. However, the bomb technicians found that one bomb passed three of the four stages of readiness. If these bombs were not supposed to be started by the pilot on the plane before departure, millions of people would have died.
Fukushima accident
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck the coast of Japan. The tectonic movement from the original earthquake triggered a tsunami that headed straight for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The massive wave, which was traveling at a speed of several hundred kilometers per hour, caused tremendous damage to the cooling and ventilation systems, which are extremely important for controlling the temperature in each reactor. This resulted in an immediate release of radioactivity.
After a month of assessing the damage to the local population, the Japanese government announced the creation of a 20 km exclusion zone on April 19, 2011. Residents were evacuated and resettled. The government ordered all six reactors to be shut down, and a year later they were completely shut down.
Today this area is extremely polluted and radiation continues to be emitted. The Japanese government has yet to find a solution.
Three Mile Island accident
On March 28, 1970, one of the worst nuclear disasters in US history occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. The plant workers did not notice that a mechanical failure in the cooling system caused a significant increase in the core temperature in the reactor.
Unfortunately, this facility did not have warning systems or sensors. The workers of the reactor turned off the supply of coolant to the reactor, which overheated and half of its uranium core melted. Although there was a radiation release, the local residents were not affected.
The threat the plant posed to two million people has fueled protests by anti-nuclear activists. On April 1, 1979, President Jimmy Carter inspected the plant to ensure that action was being taken to prevent a similar accident. For nearly forty years thereafter, Three Mile Island operated without further accidents. However, the plant is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2019 due to competitive prices for natural gas.
Chernobyl tragedy
The worst nuclear disaster that shook an entire planet occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Pripyat in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine). What was supposed to be a routine safety test was a catastrophic meltdown for the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The Soviet government provided a detailed list of instructions for workers to follow to safely take the test. But one of the shiftmen decided to ignore the protocol and did the wrong sequence when working with the core.
The intense heat from the core caused a massive release of steam, destroyed a third of the building, and released a lethal amount of radioactive material into the atmosphere, which carried the cloud to Asia and Europe. The first groups of firefighters had to literally fight with their bare hands with radioactive raw materials and fire.
To this day, a molten pile of radioactive sediment lies under the core of the reactor. If you stand next to it for 30 seconds, you can get radioactive burns. If you stand for more than four minutes, there will be only a few days left to live.
Firefighters working in the areas of precipitation died of severe radiation burns in the local city of Pripyat. Their fire suits are still in the basement of the hospital, and the room they are in is one of the most exposed areas in the exclusion zone. The Soviet government sent over 500,000 rescuers to fight the accident. Many died, though not immediately.
50,000 people of the population of Pripyat were to be evacuated, people were allowed to take only valuable things. Nine months later, the Soviet Union sealed the reactor with a steel and concrete sarcophagus.
Although the area will not be liveable for the next 50,000 years, the government did not close the station until the early 2000s.
Even today, it is difficult to determine the extent of the damage caused by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The victims of the accident continue to suffer from high rates of thyroid cancer and birth defects. However, some manage to live in the exclusion zone.
Based on materials from Listverse
Ilya Khel