What are some of the significant and minor nuclear incidents that have happened in the past, and what have the incidents influenced/what where the effects of the incident?
Chernobyl; the Chernobyl nuclear reactor (4) blew in the night of April 26 1986, where the 4th reactor lost an external power source and coolent at the same time, causing it to explode. 42 people died, 237 total people where injured
Fukushima; the Fukushima nuclear reactors (1-4) blew on march 11 2011, it was caused by an earthquake (9.0 - 9.1 magnegtude) and tsunami (not so fun fact; the wave got up to 133 ft!) the wave ut off the power plant from the grid, it submerged the backup batteries and generators, this caused the coolent pumps to stop, and even through a scram, or an emergency shutdown, residual heat caused gas (H) build ups in 4 of the reactors, this caused them to explode. 1 person died, 18 total people where injured
this incident is the last commercial incident I'm going to be talking about, there are just way to many to do all of them.
in November of 1977 a private hospital bought a radiotherapy machine, the radiotherapy machine contains cobalt-60, the machine was bought and moved, without following regulations. the machine was stored for 6 years due to not having trained staff.
On December 6, 1983 the machine was dismantled and sold for scrap, with the cobalt-60 still inside. some of the cobalt was spilled into the bed of the person's pickup, but a lot was still with/in the machine, the person then sold the machine to a scrapyard, who sold it to a steel manufacturer, the steel was then made into rebar.
On January 16, 1984 radation detectors at a labortory in new mexico went off from a truck that was transporting some rebar, local authorities then realized that the rebar triggered the alert, they proceded to contact mexico to look into the contamination.
On January 26, 1984 the mexico government then found the abandoned pickup (yes the pickup got abandoned after selling the machine) that was contaminated, they then found the owner of the truck, who said who bought the machine and the scrapyard
It was estimated that the contaminated material had made its way into 30,000 table bases and 6,600 tons of rebar.
there is alot more information on this incident but it is a lot of information for a school project :)
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