Greenpeace's Calendar of Nuclear Accidents

[Electric Monk]

Posted at the request of new DUer goodnews
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x766848#767108

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html

Below is a calendar that shows the threat that humanity faces from the atom bomb and the nuclear fuel cycle. This calendar gives some examples of the everyday nuclear incidents that have occurred all over the world. It demonstrates how technological failures coupled with human error risk public health and the environment on an almost daily basis.

January

1-1992: Four tons of heavy water spilt at Rajasthan nuclear power plant (India)
2-1993: Leak at Kozloduy nuclear power plant, release of radioactive steam (Bulgaria)
3-1961: Explosion in reactor Idaho Falls (USA); three people killed
4-1965: 6.5 kg plutonium sludge released from Savannah River reprocessing plant (USA)
5-1976: Two workers killed by radioactive carbon dioxide at Bohunice nuclear power plant (Slovakia)
6-1981: Accident at La Hague reprocessing plant (France)
7-1974: Explosion at Leningrad nuclear power plant (Russia)
8-1975: Release of radioactivity from Mihama nuclear power plant (Japan)
9-1993: Radioactive release from leaking fuel rods at Perry nuclear power plant (USA)
10-1987: Nuclear transport accident in the UK
11-1985: In Heilbronn (Germany), a Pershing-II nuclear missile catches fire, three people killed
12-1960: Technicians trying to restart a reactor at Savannah River reprocessing plant almost send it out of control (USA)
13-1964: A B-52 plane crashes with nuclear bombs on board in Maryland (USA)
14-1969: USS Enterprise, nuclear aircraft-carrier, suffers fires and explosions, killing 28 crew members
15-
16-1990: Loss of offsite power with multiple equipment failures at Dresden nuclear power plant (USA)
17-1966: A B-52 plane crashes in Spain causing plutonium contamination
18-1989: Eight workers are contaminated at Savannah River reprocessing plant (USA)
19-1992: Radioactive leak, reactor shut-down at Kola nuclear power plant (Russia)
20-1993: Technical failure at Paluel causes subcooling accident (France)
21-1969: Technical failure at Swiss experimental nuclear reactor causes release of radioactive water
22-1992: Technical failure in shut-down system at Balakovo nuclear power plant (Russia)
23- 1978: Radioactive helium released from Colorado reactor (USA)
24-1978: Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Cosmos-954 crashes in Canada
25-1982: Steam generator ruptures at R.E. Ginna nuclear power plant (USA)
26-1988: Dangerous temperature rise in a nuclear reactor on board a British submarine
27-1992: Leak causes a shut-down at Darlington nuclear power plant (Canada)
28-1990: Pump failure during a shut-down at Gravelines nuclear power plant (France)
29-1961: A B-52 plane carrying nuclear bombs crashes, the bombs do not explode but three of the eight crew members are killed (USA)
30-
31 -1996: Leakage of radiation due to human error and technical failure at Dimitrovgrad nuclear research centre (Russia)

more
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html

[underseasurveyor]

1. But it's clean and safe energy

:eyes: So say the pro-nukers

Thanks for posting this list. I'm going to (FYI) pass it on to a doc. film maker I know.... Right up her alley too :-)

[goodnews]

4. Hey that's great. I've got a lot more info and stats. I'll

I'd like to help on a documentary. It's just a big coverup of the truth about nukes worldwide!

[underseasurveyor]

9. Hi and Welcome

The info and stats you have, are they your own or are they gathered from other sources? Curious to know :-)

[goodnews]

11. I've got one story about

about a company that sells nukes, buying up a news station, then doing a documentary aired by that news station on the accident that whitewashed the part of the story about the thousands of lawsuits filed by citizens affected by the accident.
I'm interested in getting this story out so the public knows about it.

[Mnemosyne]

2. K&R for truth. n/t

[goodnews]

3. Wow, thanks for posting this ElectricMonk.

:wave:

I appreciate it. One of these accidents at the Savannah River Nuke weapons facility in S. Carolina is a mind blower. They dropped a nuke bomb accidently after a mid-air collision back in the late 50's. I wonder what checking some of these accidents for radiation would turn up?
What blows me away is that the talking heads in the MSM keep saying Three Mile Island is the only accident in US.




Here's something on Savannah River.


U.S. Discloses Accident History at Nuclear Plant
October 01, 1988|Associated Press
The Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, a large federal complex that produces fuel for the nation's nuclear weapons, has experienced numerous reactor accidents that have been kept secret for as long as 31 years, two congressional committees disclosed Friday.

The Department of Energy responded to the disclosure by saying that it had been unaware of the accidents, which occurred at all five of the plant's nuclear reactors, until inspectors began investigating a power surge at one of them last August.






A 1985 memorandum made public at a hearing by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Government Operations subcommittee on environment, energy and natural resources listed 30 incidents at the Savannah River Plant between 1957 and 1985. They included one in which fuel rods melted and another in which a chain reaction nearly went out of control.

30 Incidents

The 1985 memo, written by a plant supervisor to his superiors at Du Pont Co., which operates the plant for the government, reviewed the history of the plant and ranked the 30 "incidents of greatest significance."

"There are currently some senior managers within the department with an attitude toward production reactor safety which on the face seems to be similar to that which existed in the space program prior to the Challenger accident," said another memo released at the hearing.

That memo was written Sept. 16 by Richard Starostecki, a deputy assistant secretary, to his boss, Ernest Baynard III, the assistant energy secretary for environment, safety and health.

Dexter Peach of the congressional General Accounting Office told the hearing that there was no danger of the reactor going out of control during the August power surge, "but nobody knew it at the time." The surge occurred during the restarting of one of the plant's reactors.

"This could have been another Chernobyl if they had guessed wrong," said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio). "If I didn't know what was going on in a nuclear reactor, I would shut it down."

[marions ghost]

5. From the OP's list what about the

"plutonium sludge released 1965 Savannah River"??

Plutonium sludge...?

[goodnews]

6. Sorry, I left out the story of the lost jnuke from Savannah River

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/17/tech/main7026...

No Sign Of Long-Lost Nuke

SAVANNAH, Ga., June 17, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(AP) The first government search in decades for a nuclear bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958 failed to uncover any trace of the sunken weapon, the Air Force said in a report Friday.

The report released nine months after scientists tested radiation levels in waters off Tybee Island concluded the 7,600-pound bomb cannot explode and should be left at sea.

"The best course of action in this matter is to not continue to search for it and to leave the property in place," said the report by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency.

A damaged B-47 bomber jettisoned the Mark-15 nuke into a sound about 15 miles from Savannah in February 1958 after colliding with a fighter jet during a training flight.

[marions ghost]

7. page not found

at link

???????

[crickets]

8. There's a link or three about it

here - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=746065&mesg_id=746683

(with apologies for linking to one my own posts for brevity) The mind, it boggles.

Great topic, goodnews. K&R

[marions ghost]

10. Tybee Island very beautiful but there's a dirty secret there

...The Air Force even has suggested that the bomb itself was not armed with a plutonium trigger. But this contention is disputed by a number of factors. Howard Dixon, a former Air Force sergeant who specialized in loading nuclear weapons onto planes, said that in his 31 years of experience he never once remembered a bomb being put on a plane that wasn't fully armed. Moreover, a newly declassified 1966 congressional testimony of W.J. Howard, then assistant secretary of defense, describes the Tybee Island bomb as a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule." Howard said that the Tybee Island bomb was one of two weapons lost up to that time that contained a plutonium trigger.

Recently declassified documents show that the jettisoned bomb was an "Mk-15, Mod O" hydrogen bomb, weighing four tons and packing more than 100 times the explosive punch of the one that incinerated Hiroshima. This was the first thermonuclear weapon deployed by the Air Force and featured the relatively primitive design created by that evil genius Edward Teller. The only fail-safe for this weapon was the physical separation of the plutonium capsule (or pit) from the weapon.

In addition to the primary nuclear capsule, the bomb also harbored a secondary nuclear explosive, or sparkplug, designed to make it go thermo. This is a hollow plug about an inch in diameter made of either plutonium or highly enriched uranium (the Pentagon has never said which) that is filled with fusion fuel, most likely lithium-6 deuteride. Lithium is highly reactive in water. The plutonium in the bomb was manufactured at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State and would be the oldest in the United States. That's bad news: Plutonium gets more dangerous as it ages. In addition, the bomb would contain other radioactive materials, such as uranium and beryllium.

The bomb is also charged with 400 pounds of TNT, designed to cause the plutonium trigger to implode and thus start the nuclear explosion. As the years go by, those high explosives are becoming flaky, brittle and sensitive. The bomb is most likely now buried in 5 to 15 feet of sand and slowly leaking radioactivity into the rich crabbing grounds of the Wassaw Slough. If the Pentagon can't find the Tybee Island bomb, others might. That's the conclusion of Bert Soleau, a former CIA officer who now works with ASSURE, the salvage company. Soleau, a chemical engineer, said that it wouldn't be hard for terrorists to locate the weapon and recover the lithium, beryllium and enriched uranium, "the essential building blocks of nuclear weapons." What to do? Coastal residents want the weapon located and removed. "Plutonium is a nightmare and their own people know it," said Pam O'Brien, an anti-nuke organizer from Douglassville, Georgia. "It can get in everything--your eyes, your bones, your gonads. You never get over it. They need to get that thing out of there."

More at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05152009.html