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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]
Globally, there have been at least 99 (civilian and military) recorded nuclear power plant accidents from 1952 to 2009 (defined as incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage, the amount the US federal government uses to define nuclear energy accidents that must be reported), totaling US$20.5 billion in property damages.
Soviet submarine K-19 reactor accident 1961, July 4 More than 30 people were over-exposed to radiation when the starboard reactor cooling system failed and the reactor temp rose uncontrollably. Emergency repairs ordered by the captain successfully cooled the reactor and avoided meltdown, but exposed the workers to high levels of radiation. [17] 8
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.
Erosion of the 150-millimetre-thick (5.9 in) carbon steel reactor head at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, USA, in 2002, caused by a persistent leak of borated water The Hanford Site, in Benton County, Washington, USA, represents two-thirds of America's high-level radioactive waste by volume.
Due to decay heat, solid fuel power reactors need high flows of coolant after a fission shutdown for a considerable time to prevent fuel cladding damage, or in the worst case, a full core meltdown. In nuclear reactor operation, most heat is generated by nuclear fission, but over 6% comes from radioactive decay heat, which continues after the ...
A fission fragment reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates electricity by decelerating an ion beam of fission byproducts instead of using nuclear reactions to generate heat. By doing so, it bypasses the Carnot cycle and can achieve efficiencies of up to 90% instead of 40–45% attainable by efficient turbine-driven thermal reactors.
The damaged Reactor 4 following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history. 1983. On December 31, Unit 1 at Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant comes online in the Lithuanian SSR. The first RBMK-1500 unit, at 4800 MWth, it is the largest nuclear reactor unit by thermal power ever. Alongside Unit 2 they are the only RBMK-1500 ...