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A nuclear meltdown (core meltdown, core melt accident, meltdown or partial core melt[2]) is a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term nuclear meltdown is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency [3] or by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [4]
1975. Greifswald, East Germany. A near core meltdown at Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant: Three out of six cooling water pumps were switched off for a failed test. A fourth pump broke down by loss of electric power and control of the reactor was lost. 10 fuel elements were slightly damaged before recovery.
The world's first nuclear reactor meltdown was the NRX reactor at Chalk River Laboratories, Ontario, Canada in 1952. [22] The worst nuclear accident to date is the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986 in the Ukrainian SSR, now Ukraine. The accident killed approximately 30 people directly [23] and damaged approximately $7 billion of property.
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The reactor accident began at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, and released radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the ...
The plant's name has been synonymous with public fears over the risks associated with nuclear power since the plant suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, sparking sweeping new rules for handling ...
Nuclear reactor accidents continued into the 1960s with a small test reactor exploding at the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961 resulting in three deaths which were the first fatalities in the history of U.S. nuclear reactor operations. [6] There was also a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear ...
It was a public relations disaster for the nuclear industry, and the industry's expansion tapered off, concluding in a 20-year spell in which no new nuclear reactors were built in the U.S.
The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, near the Belarus border in the Soviet Union. [1] It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other ...