| List Of Nuclear Accidents |
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This article covers notable accidents involving nuclear devices and Radioactive materials. In some cases, these incidents involve people being injured or killed due to the release of Radioactive Contamination . Most incidents involve accidental releases that have caused contamination, but had no other immediate effects. Due to government and business secrecy, it is difficult to determine with certainty the extent of some events listed below. Because of the different nature of the events it is best to divide the list into nuclear and radiation accidents. An example of nuclear accident might be one in which a reactor core is damaged such as Three Mile Island , while an example of a radiation accident might be some event such as a Radiography accident where a worker drops the source into a river or sticks it in his pocket. These radiation accidents such as those involving the radiography sources often as not as widely reported in the popular press but they often have as much, or even greater, ability to cause serious harm to both workers and the public than the well known nuclear accidents. Radiation accidents are more common than nuclear accidents, and are often limited in scale. For instance at Soreq a worker suffered a dose which was similar to one of the highest doses suffered by a worker on site at Chernobyl on day one, but, because the gamma source was never able to leave the 2 metre thick Concrete enclosure, it was not able to harm many others. The web page at the . ACCIDENT TYPES Loss of coolant accident See Also: Loss of coolant See Also: Nuclear meltdown Criticality accidents in 1999 during the production of enriched uranium fuel {Link without Title} . Decay heat Decay Heat accidents where the heat generated by the radioactive decay causes harm. In a Nuclear Reactor that has been shut down, a Loss Of Coolant accident can damage the Core , for instance at Three Mile Island a recently shutdown ( SCRAM ed) PWR reactor was left for a length of time without cooling water. As a result the Nuclear Fuel was damaged, and the core was partly melted. Transport Transport accidents can cause a release of radioactivity resulting in contamination or shielding to be damaged resulting in direct irradiation. In Cochabamba a defective Gamma Radiography set was transported in a passenger bus as cargo. The gamma source was outside the shielding, and it irradiated some bus passengers. In the United Kingdom , it was revealed in a recent court case that a Radiotherapy source was transported from Leeds to Sellafield with defective shielding. The shielding had a gap on the underside. It is thought that no human has been seriously harmed by the escaping radiation. Equipment failure Equipment failure is one possible type of accident, recently at , it set in motion a series of events which led to a radiation injury. Human error Human Error has been responsible for some accidents, for instance a person miscalculated the activity of a Teletherapy source. This then lead to patients being given the wrong dose of Gamma Ray s. In the case of Radiotherapy accidents, an underexposure is as much an accident as an overexposure as the patients may not get the full benefit of the proscribed treatment. Also, humans have made errors while attempting to service plant and equipment which has resulting in overdoses of radiation, such as the Nevvizh and Soreq irradiator accidents. Lost source Lost source accidents {Link without Title} {Link without Title} are ones in which a radioactive source is lost, stolen or abandoned. The source then might cause harm to humans or the environment. For example, see the event in which occurred in Brazil . The IAEA have provided guides for Scrap Metal collectors on what a sealed source might look like. The scrap metal industry is the one where lost sources are most likely to be found.[http://www.srp-uk.org/srpcdrom/p8-5.doc Others Some accidents defy classification. These accidents happen when the unexpected occurs with a radioactive source. For instance if a . Also some accidents are "normal" industrial accidents which happen to involve radioactive material, for instance a Runaway Reaction at Tomsk (see Red Oil ) caused radioactive material to be spread around the site. For a list of many of the most important accidents see the IAEA site {Link without Title} . CIVILIAN NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS Main article: List Of Civilian Nuclear Accidents CIVILIAN RADIATION ACCIDENTS Main article: List Of Civilian Radiation Accidents MILITARY NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS Main article: List Of Military Nuclear Accidents SEE ALSO
REFERENCES & EXTERNAL LINKS
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