Notable Nuclear Accidents

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Oct. 7, 1957 A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor N of Liverpool, England, released radioactive material. In 1983, the British government said that 39 people had probably died of cancer as a result.

1957 A chemical explosion in Kasli, USSR (now in Russia), in tanks containing nuclear waste, spread radioactive material and forced a major evacuation.

Jan. 3, 1961 An experimental reactor at a federal installation near Idaho Falls, ID, killed 3 workers the only deaths in U.S. reactor operations. Radiation was contained.

Oct. 5, 1966 A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration breeder reactor, near Detroit, MI. Radiation contained.

Jan. 21, 1969 A coolant malfunction from an experimental underground reactor at Lucens Vad, Switzerland released a large amount of radiation into a cavern, which was then sealed.

Mar. 22, 1975 A fire at the Brown s Ferry reactor in Decatur, AL, burned out electrical controls, lowering the cooling water to dangerous levels.

Mar. 28, 1979 The worst commercial nuclear accident in the U.S. occurred as equipment failures and human mistakes led to a loss of coolant and a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Middletown, PA.

Feb. 11, 1981 Eight workers were contaminated when over 100,000 gallons of radioactive coolant leaked into the containment building of TVA s Sequoyah 1 plant in Tennessee.

Apr. 25, 1981 Some 100 workers were exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear plant at Tsuruga, Japan.

Jan. 6, 1986 A cylinder of nuclear material burst after being improperly heated at a Kerr-McGee plant at Gore, OK. One worker died; 100 were hospitalized.

Apr. 26, 1986 In the worst accident in the history of the nuclear power industry, fires and explosions resulting from an unauthorized experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Kiev, USSR (now in Ukraine), left at least 31 dead in the immediate aftermath and spread radioactive material over much of Europe. An estimated 135,000 people were evacuated from areas around Chernobyl, some of which were uninhabitable for years. As a result of the radiation released into the atmosphere, tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths (as well as increased rates of birth defects) were expected in succeeding decades.