According to experts, the likelihood of such accidents has been underestimated until now
After analyzing 216 accidents and other incidents recorded in the history of the development of nuclear power, specialists from the University of Sussex in the UK and the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich came to the conclusion that the likelihood of such incidents is much higher than commonly believed. Scientists fear that a catastrophe comparable in scale with those that happened at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant or at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, with a considerable probability, could occur in the foreseeable future.
Scientists note that, according to previous similar studies, the number of accidents at nuclear power plants in the world has generally declined over time. However, the results of a new and largest statistical analysis to date indicate that this trend affects only medium to relatively large accidents, while the likelihood of truly significant accidents is still very high. According to experts, disasters like the Chernobyl or Fukushima disasters are likely to occur once or twice a century, and accidents capable of "competing" for third place after them - once every one or two decades.
The accidents that occurred at Chernobyl in 1986 and at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in 2011, as the analysis showed, are practically incomparable in scale with other accidents of this kind - the material damage from each of them significantly exceeds the damage from all other accidents combined, amounting to 259 thousand dollars and 166 thousand dollars, respectively.
The researchers collected data from a variety of reports, pre-written scientific papers, press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, and various other sources. As a result, the number of accidents, information about which specialists were able to summarize, turned out to be twice as high as in the largest of other similar studies. According to experts, this fact is very important in itself - it indicates that the statistics on disasters at nuclear power plants are "frighteningly incomplete."
As a result of their research, the scientists compiled two scientific papers, which were subsequently published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science and Risk Analysis.
Dmitry Erusalimsky