Worst Nuclear Disasters in Our History

Nuclear disasters such as the one that occurred in Japan on March 13th, 2011, have created havoc and hardship to not only the people that live in the area surrounding the nuclear power plant, but to the whole world.

The Chernobyl accident not only affected their immediate environment for generations, rendering the land useless for all intents and purposes. The land on which the power plant sits on now is simply wasted space. That area will never hold homes or businesses for generations to come.

As a population of the world increases, we need more alternatives to power so that we can sustain our lives, but there has to be a better answer than the nuclear power.

While this type of power may be good in some aspects, when a disaster such as what happened in Japan, or Chernobyl the repercussions hurt everyone. Once a meltdown occurs any benefit of that power plant is lost, along with their livelihoods of the people in the affected area.

There have been many nuclear disasters but since they occur years apart no one really pays attention to the frequency. Here are ten different disasters that have occurred since 1957 and this is just a small handful.

Tokaimura Nuclear Accident, happened on September 30, 1999 in Japan occurred when too much uranium was added to an experimental reactor. Three people got huge levels of radiation posing and two of them died.

Tomsk-7 Explosion, which occurred on April 6. 1993 in Siberia when a person who was using nitric acid as a cleaner in a processing tank, The acid reacted with an unknown substance in the tank and caused a chemical reaction to occur. The ground was contained for up to 47 square miles.

Goiania Accident, occurred on September 13, 1987 Brazil. Occurred when a man opened a therapy machine and removed a small cake of radio active material. Not knowing what it was he allowed others to touch it, several city blocks had to be demolished because of this. It became the foundation for research of safe handling of these materials.

Chernobyl, happened on April 26, 1986 in the Ukraine because untrained workers were operating a defected reactor. Two workers died that night, and another twenty eight people died within the two weeks that followed. Within three months lots of people died as a result of radiation poisoning this included plant workers as well as firefighters who fought the fires which resulted in the explosions.

The K-431 Chazhma Bay incident on August 10. 1985 occurred when a Russian submarine exploded sending radiation airborne and killing 10 people and wounded another 50 people while at sea.

Three Mile Island, occurred on March 28, 1979 in the United States this was only a partial meltdown which caused no deaths or injuries. However it was notable because of the way it was handled. Much research in the safety of nuclear power plants came from this accident.

Yucca Flats,happened on December 18. 1970 in Nevada, no deaths occurred but almost 90 workers on the site were exposed to high levels of radiation. This area of desert is a place where many underground nuclear explosions have occurred on purpose.

Thule Accident, occurred on January 21, 1968 American military plane flying over Greenland had a fire in the cabin and tried to do an emergency landing. The plane went out of control and crashed causing widespread ground contamination. The Thule Accident is quite similar to the Palomares accident describes below and also on the link above.

Palomares Incident, which happened on January 17, 1966 is another military accident. A fuel supplier plane is filling up an American bomber in mid-flight over Spain, they have an accident and the fuel plane blows up. The bomber survives the accident, but four hydrogen bombs fell out of the broken bomber. One of them was found in the ocean, two exploded on the ground caused hundreds of miles of contaminated ground, the fourth was never found.

The Windscale Fire nuclear disaster occurred on October 10, 1957, in Britain. A reactor catches on fire and wide spread ground contamination occurred. This was the worst one until three mile island incident.