Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Nuclear reactors use and produce very poisonous radioactive substances. Incidents leading to leaks and spillages of radioactive materials are not uncommon, sometimes leading to temporary closure of the plants. Whilst accidents may often be contained and do not always present major dangers to health and the environment, that is not always the case.

As with any industry the nuclear industry can never predict every eventuality; each accident is caused by a different set of errors whether human, mechanical or both depending on a different set of circumstances. Unlike most other industries, however, every nuclear reactor carries with it the risk of catastrophic accident leading to global radiation contamination which impacts on human health and results in loss of lives. The three most well-known disasters, apart from the ongoing catastrophe at the Fukushima plant in Japan, are below:

Windscale (Sellafield), Cumbria, UK, 10th October 1957

One of two reactors at Britain’s first nuclear plant, used to produce plutonium for Britain’s nuclear weapons programme, caught fire and burned for two days dispersing poisonous radioactive smoke over Britain, Northern Ireland and northern Europe; radioactive fallout was identified as far away as in Norway, Belgium and Germany. There was no evacuation of local people, yet over 2 million litres of milk from a 500km2 area were poured into local rivers and the sea due to fears over Iodine-131 contamination.

Demands on the reactor and its staff to produce material for Britain’s first thermonuclear bomb are likely to have contributed to the accident. The disaster was very much down-played by the government and the UK Atomic Energy Agency because of concerns that it would jeopardise plans to collaborate with the US on nuclear weapons research. The full inquiry into the accident was only allowed to be published 30 years after the event. A re-analysis of the radioactive fallout from the accident was published in 2007 and concluded that twice as much radiation had been emitted than was previously thought which could have caused around 240 cases of cancer. Final decomissioning of the site is still several decades away.

Chernobyl, Ukraine, 26th April 1986

This disaster occurred when one of four reactors exploded and burned for over a week. Radioactive fallout from this accident was detected over large parts of the world and all over western Europe; in the UK especially in Cumbria, Wales and Scotland. Tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated from the surrounding area and hundreds of thousands of deaths and illnesses are likely to have been caused by the radioactive fallout. Read more about the Chernobyl accident.

Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, US, 28th March 1979

A loss of coolant water to the reactor core of Unit 2 of a pair of reactors caused it to partially melt down releasing radioactive gases into the atmosphere. The reactor had already suffered several breakdowns and had only been in operation for three months. After two days, authorities evacuated 3,500 children and pregnant women living within a five mile area. Around 200,000 people fled their homes. How much radiation was dispersed (and thus the level of corresponding health impacts) is disputed; the official line is that insignificant amounts were released. However, records were lost, radiation detection equipment may not have worked, and monitors on the vents stacks were said to have been rendered useless by excess moisture. According to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, ‘People were exposed to higher doses than were acknowledged’.

A US House of Representatives committee report, published two years later, declared that ‘misleading statements’ about the accident were presented by the managers giving ‘the impression the accident was substantially less severe and the accident more under control than what the managers themselves believed and what was in fact the case.’ The operators of the plant were indicted in 1983 by the US Department of Justice for destruction of safety data and criminal falsification. A distinct lack of research into cancer rates and infant mortality after the disaster has been criticised .

For more information on nuclear weapons and reactor disasters up to 1989 read The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age.