Talk:Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archives

I've created an archive page for older stuff - this page had exceeded the reccomended 32k length, and the older stuff was a mish-mash without proper indexing and headers. Let's use the index/header system from here forward to keep the page neater, the discussions easier to follow, and the 'pedia more useful. Elde 18:14, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

A question of copy write violation

NOTE: This is not a criticism of the action only a clarification.

This comment pertains to an edit preformed by Bobbis on 05/10/05 -“2000s Tidy up Novosiberian entry (reword due to copyvio))”- I would just like to clarify that there was no copy write violation involved in my entries. The Bellona Foundation encourages everyone to reprint or excerpt their articles as long as they credit the source. I contacted the Foundation by email and asked them to review the entries I had made using their resources and this was their reply, “We greatly appreciate wikipedia, and your way of crediting is perfect. Keep up the good work. Best regards Jens Bugge”. He may be contacted at [[email protected]]. I would also like to add this is not a case of plagiarism, as I take no credit for the content. The only credit I could claim is finding the entries and relaying them to the community at large.

I understand and applaud the efforts made by Bobbis. Thank you, I support any efforts to create a unique resource as long as the essential content is not altered in a radical manner without good documented proof of the need. I only wish to point out to everyone that Bellona's copy write policy approves of the entries altered or not.

Are Bellona willing to license their material under GFDL which is what Wikipedia uses:

"All contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Project:Copyrights for details)."

Also remember to sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~). Evil Monkey∴Hello 00:08, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

USS Thresher

What do you mean by "refit period" for the USS Thresher? That was a brand-new boat on its first voyage? And, by the way, there were a lot of civilians aboard her, not just Navy men. --Sobolewski 04:55, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Read the history of Thresher for a full explanation. Elde 18:11, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Apollo 13 / RTG's

Didn't the return of the Apollo 13 lunar module (designed to be left on the Moon) end up dumping a several-kilogram chunk of plutonium on the Pacific ocean floor near New Zealand? This was my understanding in the past, but I'm having difficulty confirming it. Would this be considered a nuclear accident? Arkuat 01:43, 2004 Jul 18 (UTC)

Check out the book Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and journalist Jeffrey Kluger. This book was the basis for Apollo 13, but the bit about the Lunar Module's reactor rod got left out. It does appear in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, in the episode which covers the Apollo 13 failure.

I'd call it a well-averted potential accident, myself, but it's defintely worth including in some list, somewhere.

Anville 17:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What was carried on Apollo 13 was not a reactor rod or lump of plutonium, it was an Radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which creates electricity from the heat given off by the decay. I added Apollo 13 a couple of weeks ago to the list for April 1971. Most of the information on the internet that I've found basically state that no increase in background radiation was found in the Tonga Trench area where it was directed. There is actually very little out there that I could find. It is mentioned in FTETTM. --enceladus 01:25, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

RTG's often use plutonium, but of a different isotope than that which is usable for bombs or reactors or Slotin's accident. Nonetheless it is still chemically poisonous (plutonium of any isotope is the most poisonous substance in industry) and radioactive (it will irradiate you just by being near it). --Sobolewski 04:55, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Slotin's accident involved uranium, not plutonium. Elde 18:11, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Currently, the article says, "The device consisted of two half-spheres of beryllium-covered plutonium, which can be moved together slowly to measure the criticality."

—wwoods 21:10, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Sellafield 2004--2005

The Sellafield spill was discovered in April 2005, but apparently began as long ago as August 2004. How should this be reflected in the listing? (BBC) Myron 09:33, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is this even a accident? Some plumbing leaked, the leakage is contained in a tank, nothing escaped from the building, no one injured. pstudier 21:41, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Plant administrators allegedly were forced to upgrade their rating of the event(Carlisle Business Gazette) from Level 0 to Level 3 on the International Nuclear Events Scale [1], which is a "serious incident" rather than an "accident without significant off-site risk". Currently the bulk of the spill has been transferred and awaits conversion to a more manageable form. The plant remains closed, presumably until the leaking pipe can be replaced. Thus at Pstudier's suggestion I will remove the section on the April 19, 2005 spill in a few days unless someone raises an objection. Myron 02:16, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

nuclear tests!?; everything thrown together indiscriminately

Why in the world does this article list nuclear tests? They weren't accidents, they were intentional tests of weapons. In general, I think the usefulness of this article is greatly diminished because it mixes together so many kinds of incidents. There are those that had significant health effects and those that (like Three Mile Island) didn't. There are military and civilian ones. Everything is just thrown together in chronological order, which basically makes it useless.--Bcrowell 04:35, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Nuclear tests are listed because of a phenomenon known as rainout: ideally, the radioactive plume from a nuclear test will be spread fairly evenly throughout the atmosphere, so no one location gets much. If the plume encounters a rainstorm, though, one area will get almost the entire dose. Rainout events have been some of the deadliest nuclear accidents, but it's almost impossible to prove. --Carnildo 07:02, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Bcrowell. If we have an article for nuclear accidents, nuclear tests should not be listed unless there was an accident during the test. Neither a test nor rain can be properly called an accident, so I suggest starting a new article called List of nuclear tests. --Ignignot 14:36, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Oops! Now that I have actually checked, the article List of nuclear tests already exists, and is quite exstensive. The only tests that should be in both that article and this one should be tests that have an accident. --Ignignot 14:38, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Carnildo -- IMO the logic you use to link nuclear tests to accidents is weak, and it gives the article a very POV flavor of trying to find every possible item to make the list look longer, even if it's not really an accident. The lead doesn't explain why this would fall within the scope of the article, the entries for the tests don't explain the logic for their inclusion, and their inclusion is redundant with List of nuclear tests.--Bcrowell 15:55, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Upon a close reading of the article, and comparing against the List of nuclear tests, I have found that several of the tests mentioned in this article are either listed at different dates (for Apr 26, 1953; Dec 18, 1970) or are not listed at all (for Nov 22, 1955; Dec 9, 1968). Otherwise, all of the nuclear tests are listed, but without any details. If they are removed from this article, there needs to be some sort of merge.

In addition, the entry for July 2, 1956 does not explain why it is a nuclear accident, and the May 1963 entry is unreadable. Also, if nuclear tests are not considered a nuclear accident, then should the intentional destructive atmospheric re-entry of an RTG in a satellite or spacecraft also be considered a nuclear accident? --Ignignot 19:00, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

"Also, if nuclear tests are not considered a nuclear accident, then should the intentional destructive atmospheric re-entry of an RTG in a satellite or spacecraft also be considered a nuclear accident?" I would say no, it shouldn't. If it's planned and intentional, it's not an accident.--Bcrowell 19:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Another big category of bogus entries consists of incidents in which U.S. bombers crashed, but no radioactivity was released. An airplane crashing isn't a nuclear accident, and in the cases where the radioactives were not released or were completely recovered, that's a demonstration that the safety precautions worked, not that they failed; I don't see how these qualify as nuclear accidents at all. I've deleted them.--Bcrowell 20:15, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Even after pruning, the article is still 93k. I'm going to split it into two different articles, List of civilian nuclear accidents and List of military nuclear accidents. The issues are completely different, and it's misleading that articles like Nuclear power phase-out are linking to this article, as if it was all about power plant accidents. (In the case of Nuclear power phase-out, I've already changed the wording so it was no longer so misleading.)--Bcrowell 20:24, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Iraq?

What? No lost sources in Iraq? I can't believe it, it was all over the news in Europe. 145.254.67.7 19:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of the differences between nuclear and radiation

I have noticed that someone has removed the text which explains the difference between a nuclear and a plain radiation accident. I think that this text is vital to allow a person who is not a specialist to understand the difference. So I am returning it to the page.Cadmium 11:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Types and Causes

I think we need some differentiation between Types of Incidents, and Causes. At the moment, the heading "Types of Accident" includes both types and causes, however as far as I can see all causes boil down to Human Error anyway! I think the article loses it's way around this point.

Types of Incidents are:

• Reactor meltdown (e.g. Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, Windscale)
• Criticality (Incidents where criticality occurs when not expected, will often also result in vocational overexposure)
• Vocational Overexposure (Incidents where people working with radioactive materials in controlled environments receive abnormally high exposure)
• Leakage (radiation and / or radioactive material outside areas where such radiation / material is normally encountered)
• Reactor Scram (which I guess mostly don't get reported if the problem doesn't get any worse)
• Medical mis-Exposure (Where radiation therapy dosing is incorrect)

Root Causes may be:

• Human Error
• Bad Planning / Design (see Human Error)
• Equipment failure (see Bad planning / Design)
• Maintenance failure (see Human Error)
• Inappropriate or incorrect procedures (see Human Error)

Can anyone see an intermediate cause that isn't going to come back to human error at some point in the design, manufacturing, maintenance or operation of the system in which the incident occurs?

DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 01:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

List of nuclear explosions

Right now Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an article "List of nuclear explosions". A good start would be this site:

http://www.ga.gov.au/oracle/nukexp_form.jsp

It seems to contain all known nuclear explosions. --Abdull 23:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Name change

This article does not seem to be a "list". Looking in the history, it used to be a list, but the entries were moved into three new lists. Since it is no longer a list and there is no article on nuclear and/or radiation accidents, perhaps its name should be changed to "nuclear and radiation accidents". -- Kjkolb 03:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Moved article to Nuclear and radiation accidents Petri Krohn 22:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Citation needed

Citation needed for "bird snatches radium from windowsill" story. ▫ UrbaneLegend ^talk 09:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Why does France never have problems?

Something is wrong. The USA has problems. The UK has problems. Russia has problems. France has none. True or suppresion?

Germany also has none, so what? ;-) I guess they've simply just started late enough so that the problems were known and could be avoided.

Germany had many problems and nuclear and radiation incidents, they're just not listed here. Same with France. One problem might be that fewer and fewer people use printed sources. There are list by the governments, in books published after the Harrisburg and Chernobyl accidents.

(Sidenote: Reshuffeling information sometimes seems to be a POV activity here and on related lists, articles and talk pages, making it harder to find some information, if at all) -- Gwyndon 09:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

If you're talking about the decision to split the article into civilian and military nuclear accidents and so on, before we did it this article was just a tiny bit of text and a huge freaking list. It was unusable as anything but a list. Now at least something can be said about the accidents in general and what response there has been.

I also find it extremely unlikely that France and Germany have had no nuclear accidents, but I suspect this is more the result of the English-centric article. If there are any lists for other countries that are readable, preferably online, please list them here so we can incorporate them. --Ignignot 15:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

France's most serious nuclear accident happened in November 1992. Three workers were contaminated after entering a nuclear particle accelerator in Forbach without protective clothing. Executives were jailed in 1993 for failing to take proper safety measures. --DV8 2XL 15:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Ummm.. That's a Van De Graaf type electron accelerator. [2] Why do you think it's a nuclear accident? — Omegatron 15:27, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Greenpeace has a list, which includes 20 French accidents. Considering the source, I'm sure it's overblown and sensationalistic, but at least it can be assumed to be exhaustive. :-) — Omegatron 19:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I take that back, actually. (The "exhaustive" part.) That page is meant to show one accident per day of the year, I guess? So it doesn't list a lot of things, including France's worst disaster: On 1980-03-13, there was annealing of graphite in La Hague reactor, causing the core to overheat? No radiation was released and it is considered INES 4 due to the damage to the core. Though another source says the silo fire at La Hague was the worst accident at the plant itself. That was on 1981-01-08 and is considered INES 3. I am making a list and will put anything here if it meets the criteria. — Omegatron 15:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

"The Great Whatsit"

(Not the most appropriate place to ask, but what the heck..)

The classic noir film Kiss Me Deadly revolves around the smuggling of a breadbox-sized lead container containing a man-made radioactive substance so powerful that when the lid is opened it emits a blinding light. A split-second exposure to the substance causes skin burns, while exposure for more than several seconds causes combustion. The film ends dramatically when a women opens the box (wouldn't listen!) and quickly bursts into flames, burning down the entire house in a matter of moments. Are there any materials that actually behave like this, or is this simply dramatic license? (The substance also makes an eerie screaming noise, but thats not real, right? ^_^ ) --RevWaldo 04:07, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

To me that sounds like dramatic license. It is noramlly the case that skin burns take hours/days to appear. If you read the IAEA reports on the men who have entered the irradation rooms of food / medical equipment irradation plants, then you will see how many of these people lived for weeks after getting doses of about 10 Gy. The burn marks took days to appear fully.Cadmium 08:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

That's dramatic license, all right. A radioisotope with an activity rate high enough to emit heat of that order would have a very short half-life; it would lose most of its potency in hours. Also, it would melt its way out of a container of lead (or most any other metal.) --ChrisWinter 23:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Bingo. If it's energy was really from decay heat of the magnitude that could burn down a house (I'm thinking China Syndrome level) then it wouldn't matter weather you put it in a lead box or a picnic basket. The point of decay heat is that nothing in the universe can stop it. It's possible that such a substance exists, but it's not possible that it's in a hand-held size. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

List of doomsday scenarios

Could use votes to save this article, thanks MapleTree 22:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

External Link (Mine)

I have a list of nuclear accidents, which differs in some ways from the ones presented. I'm not supposed to link to it, since there is a conflict of interest. All the claims are referenced, which makes it very easy for an independent researcher to verify. A great many of the sources of info about military accidents are actually just secondary sources based on one primary source (a document the DOD released in the mid-80's). This page is the result of a research project of mine that digs up other primary sources, beyond the DOD article (which is also referenced).

If somebody added this external link, I think it would strengthen the verifiable information in the article.

http://www.luvnpeas.org/understand/nukes.html

Bsharvy 15:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguations

Hey, I'm sure I went a little too far with all of the main page links and "for" such and such, but I wanted to just throw them out there as I fixed the link to the list of accidents so that I could bring attention to it and ppl could agree on which is the best solution. I personally think we should have the statement at the beginning of the article, b/c these pages really are difficult to navigate and I think it will help people out a lot.

Either way, I think that either the link for main articles in the accidents section should be deleted or the "for" statement at the top of the page should be deleted. Let's decide.theanphibian 15:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Undue weight

The article itself is biased. Where's the List of coal power plant accidents? — Omegatron 19:01, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

My goodness, do you pro-nuclear people really feel as persecuted as you sound? I really hope not. The obvious solution to the absence of a particular article is to start writing it. -- Johnfos 21:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Pro-nuclear? Persecuted? — Omegatron 01:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is a list of wind power accidents, for instance, including fatalities and injuries to workers and the public, and environmental and property damage: http://www.caithnesshost.co.uk/CWIF/fullaccidents.pdf Should we create an article for it? — Omegatron 21:58, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes! Maybe we can calculate a fatality per Kwh for nuclear or wind, or would that be original research? Paul Studier (talk) 20:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

We don't need to. I've been casually researching this for a few weeks now, and there are several sources for fatalities/TW-yr and so on that we can cite. Wind looks very bad, and nuclear looks very good, but the numbers from one to the next source disagree wildly (one includes deaths from coal pollution while another just looks at occupational deaths, etc.) I wrote about this a little in Wind_power#Safety. — Omegatron 16:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Here's a not-so-reliable source: [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1986389/posts] — Omegatron 01:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

And another: [3] — Omegatron 13:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

See Greenpeace' ENEF Q&A, p. 2. -- Eiland (talk) 16:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup tag

I'll assist when and if I can find the time, but this article is frankly a mess. It is all over the map, mainly due to its over-generalized and unprofessional terminology. The structure and flow are nearly non-existent, and the hodge-podge of subtopics make it appear as though the article has been cobbled together by people who only have faint technical knowledge. This is simply not a good quality encyclopedia article. --24.28.6.209 01:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Demolished Island

I heard that a hydrogen bomb was detonated on a Pacific island, and that the island went under water. Is this true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.227.247.2 (talk) 00:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Bikini Atoll? — Omegatron 21:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

List of radiation accidents

Which list is to include radiation accidents which do not involve a reactor or fissile material? Like severe accidental exposure to radioactive sources in hospitals, the Goiânia accident, ... -- eiland (talk) 16:23, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Nuclear Accident in Japan

http://www.care2.com/news/member/367830772/425847 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.167.86.44 (talk) 22:29, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

NRC Page

The NRC actually maintains a day to day account of all nuclear reports (some accidents like misplaced radioactive material, some drunk operators, some equipment failure, etc.) Now there is already a link to the NRC home page in the article, but it is difficult to navigate to the correct place, and the link in the article is somewhat buried (at least in my mind) compared to its very useful nature. For the United States, it is both more detailed and probably more accurate than this article. However, I dunno if I should add another link in this article, or just switch the old one, and what, if any, steps should be taken with regard to making it stand out more. --Ignignot 19:44, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Marie Curie

Couldn't Marie Curie's death to radiation poisoning be considered to be on this page? I mean, there are already a few scientists' death to experimental accidents and she was one of the first researchers in radiation (2 Nobel Prizes, together with her husband). Jules LT 17:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Walking Ghost Phase

Acute radiation poisoning, 100% fatality after 7 days (LD 100/7). An exposure this high leads to spontaneous symptoms after 5 to 30 minutes. After powerful fatigue and immediate nausea caused by direct activation of chemical receptors in the brain by the irradiation, there is a period of several days of comparative well-being, called the latent (or "walking ghost") phase. After that, cell death in the gastric and intestinal tissue, causing massive diarrhea, intestinal bleeding and loss of water, leads to water-electrolyte imbalance. Death sets in with delirium and coma due to breakdown of circulation. Death is inevitable; the only treatment that can be offered is pain therapy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.30.203.13 (talk) 00:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Number of Deaths?

I think it would be a good idea to include the number of deaths from nuclear accidents at the top of the page. Since there's such huge opposition to this movement, surely the 100 or so deaths at Chernobyl are not the only fatalities. Paxuniv (talk) 17:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Not the only, but the largest single number. The sources for the other deaths are widespread (and probably under-reported due to official secrecy) - is anyone aware of a collected source? There have been fatal research and industrial criticality accidents, nuclear bomb test fatalities, nuclear submariner deaths, even deaths among hunters and scrap metal collectors (with Russian RTGs). But the total number is not too large. Rmhermen (talk) 17:38, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

No. 56 deaths (give or take). Those other possible fatalities are speculation and not fit to put in this article. When editing an article on nuclear accidents, remember the same integrity that is expected on conventional accidents is still required. Protectthehuman (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Amazingly erroneous paragraph in Intro

I removed the following paragraph for the following reasons:

In the period to 2007, sixty-three major nuclear accidents have occurred at nuclear power plants. Twenty-nine of these have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and 71 percent of all nuclear accidents (45 out of 63) occurred in the United States. However, no accident at a US commercial nuclear power plant has ever resulted in a worker or civilian being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

I found no source for this information, and it outright contradicts other Wikipedia articles. And on the INES scale a "major nuclear accident" is a Chernobyl! Please provide a source when rewriting this paragraph. Simesa (talk) 11:37, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we should not be mixing the terminologies "nuclear accident" and "radiation accident", as the two have greatly different magnitudes of scale. Separating the two will require an article re-write. Simesa (talk) 11:41, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I also removed:

Twenty-nine major nuclear accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and 71 percent of all nuclear accidents (45 out of 63) occurred in the United States, challenging the notion that severe nuclear accidents cannot happen within the United States or that they have not happened since Chernobyl.

for the same reason - there simply haven't been 29 Chernobyls. Simesa (talk) 11:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I further removed:

A study published in Energy Policy in May 2008 shows that, in the period to 2007, sixty-three nuclear accidents have occurred at nuclear power plants. Twenty-nine of these have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and 71 percent of all nuclear accidents (45 out of 63) occurred in the United States.

for similar reasons - I don't believe they were nuclear accidents as defined on the INES scale, and other Wikipedia articles don't support the numbers. I'm going to look up that article (which is apparently not on-line). Simesa (talk) 11:59, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The text from Benjamin K. Sovacool (an assistant professor in Singapore) appears to have been taken word-for-word from [4]. No source is given on that webpage for his assertions - however, he defines a "major accident" as "The major accidents were defined as incidents that resulted in either death or more than $50,000 of property damage." - clearly not to the INES scale of "major nuclear accident". Simesa (talk) 12:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

By Sovacool's scale, an auto accident involving two Mercedes-Benszs could be a "major accident". Simesa (talk) 12:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

INES

I read the article by Sovacool, et al. - I do find it slightly ironic that his work regarding the nuclear industry appears in Exploration and Production: Oil and Gas, but well, that's just me; still, I did note that his classification of such a wide variety of events as "accidents" is apparently is not in agreement with IAEA standards, which define events of INES 4 and greater as "accidents"; INES 1, 2, and 3 are classified as "incidents"; while INES 0 is classified as "deviations". I think that normalization of that list to the objective IAEA criteria of "accidents" is called for, along with porting the contents of the list that are not INES 4 and greater to the appropriate pages for incidents and deviations. What do you think? Katana0182 (talk) 06:06, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I honestly think that, apart from Chernobyl, the nuclear power industry has a pretty good record regarding accidents and there is no need to be coy about listing accidents here. There are different ways of classifying these accidents and I think it helps to provide balance on WP by presenting these different classifications, provided the info is supported by reliable sources, which it clearly is here. I have added an INES column to the table in this article and ask that it be completed when someone gets the time. Johnfos (talk) 16:49, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I understand and empathize with your perspective, but I believe it is important to use the correct, objective, international standard terminology that has been approved of by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to describe accidents involving ionizing radiation and nuclear materials. As the INES puts it, an accident is of a specific range of events token categorized between INES Levels 4 and 7; classification between Levels 0 - 7 is determined IAW INES User's Manual 2008. I am inclined to believe that the IAEA, being an objective, unbiased, scientific and engineering organ of the United Nations dedicated to the service of humankind in the development of peaceful nuclear power and peaceful nuclear medicine has greater standing in defining what a nuclear accident is than the opinion of a person not in a nuclear field of study such as Sovacool, an US expatriate assistant professor in Singapore, believes a nuclear accident to be. According to my reading of the page on reliable sources, an international standard as to what a nuclear accident is has greater standing and is generally more of a reliable source than what an US expatriate assistant professor in Singapore thinks a "nuclear accident" is.

One example of the "deviations" that not having an objective criteria for defining accidents leads to is that the recent Vermont Yankee deviation or incident (related to extraordinarily slight tritiation of unused groundwater) is being defined as a "nuclear accident" in this article. Undoubtedly, though certain interests (such as the natural ga...anti-nuclear lobby) might love for it to be perceived as a nuclear disaster on the order of Chernobyl leading to Blinky, the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons mutating into existence in the Connecticut River (gotta love the costume - the message, on the other hand, does betray a certain lack of sophistication) it can hardly be classified as anything other than an event of Level 0 (which the INES terms "NO SAFETY SIGNIFICANCE") or INES Level 1, no matter how much it is FoxNewsed.

We must also reflect upon, duly meditate regarding, and be mindful of systemic bias - a major issue on Wikipedia - in using a non-international definition of what a "nuclear accident" is. Since the IAEA is a truly international agency who represents the interests of the so-called "Third World" - the Global South - as well as the First World, and whose last director was an Egyptian, Mohamed ElBaradei, an international civil servant of high regard, who managed to infuriate both the US and Iran at the same time in his levelhanded application of international standards, it presumably has a lesser degree of systemic bias than an US expatriate assistant professor from Singapore, a First World nation. Using the IAEA's naturally diverse perspective on what exactly a "nuclear accident" entails provides a degree of due regard to alternative discourses coming from the potentially oppressed nations and peoples of the post-colonial Global South. I don't mean to imply anything, but perhaps the choice of Sovacool rather than a post-colonial scholar or the naturally diverse IAEA perspective might note a completely unconscious and inadvertent Euro/Amerocentrist, and Orientalist bias, as the late Dr. Said, formerly of Columbia University, has extensively commented upon.Katana0182 (talk) 23:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

With earthquakes, it is useful to know the intensity on the Richter scale, but we also want to know about loss of life and economic costs. It is a similar situation here.

I have begun to add some INES levels, but could do with some help. Johnfos (talk) 05:15, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Sovacool

I have updated Benjamin K. Sovacool's reporting of accident figures, based on his recent paper in Journal of Contemporary Asia. This paper is worth looking at as it has an eight-page appendix which actually lists the accidents. There can be no question that this and other refereed journal articles by Sovacool are WP:reliable sources. (And I have heard that he is writing a book on Nuclear power which will no doubt go into more detail.) So this is what is being said in the article:

Benjamin K. Sovacool has reported that worldwide there have been 99 accidents at nuclear power plants 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 major energy accidents that must be reported), totaling US$20.5 billion in property damages.[4] Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and almost two-thirds (56 out of 99) of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the USA. There have been comparatively few fatalities associated with nuclear power plant accidents.[4]

I think this usefully complements other material which is being presented in the article. Johnfos (talk) 20:32, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

As discussed above, I do not believe that Sovacool's definition of "nuclear accident" is in line with international standards as established by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency. Sovacool is welcome to call anything he wants an "accident"; he retains, as all men and women do, the right to free speech. However, Wikipedia is not a forum for free expression, but is rather dedicated to expanding access to the sum of human knowledge.

Since there is an objective definition of a nuclear accident from the International Atomic Energy Agency using INES Users' Manual 2008 (http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/INES-2009_web.pdf) that does not comport with Sovacool's opinion as to what a nuclear accident is, it may be surmised that he has a minority (if not a fringe) viewpoint as to what should be considered a nuclear accident.

Because of this, he is not a credible source as to "how many accidents occurred at nuclear power plants" unless his assessment has been done based on the international standard as to what a nuclear accident is. It has not been. Instead, he uses his own arbitrary criteria as to what an accident is.

I eagerly await your explanation as to how Sovacool's definition of a nuclear accident is more credible than that of the International Atomic Energy Agency.Katana0182 (talk) 01:20, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, where has Sovacool come up with the "4056" person death toll of Chernobyl? According to most reliable sources, the death toll was 56, using the most conservative assumptions. There have been 4000 questionable thyroid nodule detections (precancerous) among the affected population, or something like that (which may be due to the increased level of screening that persons affected by the accident have gone through; of course, it may be due to actual exposure.) But those are not deaths, in fact, thyroid cancer has a 95%+ survival rate. Is this an indication of slipshod research practices (add 4000, publish) in addition to the use of an arbitrary definition of nuclear accidents? Katana0182 (talk) 01:35, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you even taken the time to read Sovacool's peer-reviewed articles which you are objecting to? Did you go through the accident list which Sovacool provides and examine the criteria he uses for identifying these accidents? Did you notice that most of the accidents listed in this WP article are quite notable and have been often been discussed in the media [5] [6] [7] and books [8] ? It all seems very straightforward to me. There really should be few surprises to complain about here. Johnfos (talk) 03:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Radiation accidents

For the sake of article consistency, I would recommend this section be presented in tabular form similar to the preceding section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tryanmax (talk • contribs) 16:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Windscale fire

Where does the supposed fatality figure of 33 come from? It says no such thing in the actual article on the incident. Draggleduck (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

There are several reliable sources that give the 33 figure, including:

• Perhaps the Worst, Not the First TIME magazine, May 12, 1986.
• Benjamin K. Sovacool. A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and Renewable Electricity in Asia, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 40, No. 3, August 2010, p. 393.

-- Johnfos (talk) 02:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Scope of the article

At some times it talks exclusively about civilian nuclear power plants but at others it includes also military issues and civilian non-power production issues. The article needs to be tightened to a well defined scope and reorganized to separate military and civilian issues. We also need to develop criteria for the exclusion and inclusion of accidents. The current focus on monetary cost is unreliable since it is easy to find contradictory sources, as well as the fact that money changes value. An accident in 2009 that cost $200 million and an accident in 1975 that cost $50 million actually have about the same cost, due to inflation. Nailedtooth (talk) 15:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Table sorting by date

Sorting the table by date organizes the data by month, not year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.38.132.1 (talk) 22:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

not much more beautiful, but its fixed as per Help:Table#Sorting -- eiland (talk) 15:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I've used {{dts}} to make it look nice and sort properly. - htonl (talk) 15:36, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Nuclear Power Plant Accidents

The article is entitled "nuclear and radiation accidents", and corresponds to the IAEA definition of such events. However, the table on nuclear power plant accidents includes several incidents which are not "nuclear and radiation accidents", such as a steam pipe explosion. This is seriously misleading to the reader. Furthermore, the section appears to be single-sourced, and by someone known hostile to nuclear power, which brings in additional WP:V and POV issues.

Also, to the previous editor who inserted the Sodium Reactor Experiment. You put it in a table that asserted it had multiple fatalities and/or $100M+ in property damage. Fell Gleaming^talk 12:43, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! You do have a point, but to go one step further, I find that the filtering of a list of nuclear accidents with elements such as "over $100 million" or "accounted fatalities" is completely misleading! When I enter the keyword "list of nuclear accidents" I expect at least to be informed about all of them (as possible as it can be). The justification of omitting entries is unacceptable for me. I will no more apply any more editing to this article as long as it is rebuilt on a new basis to the benefit of the reader. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Papg2010 (talk • contribs) 13:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Papg. The justification is simply one of notability. If a worker drops a bolt on the floor at a nuclear power plant, is that notable enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia entry? I agree that any accident that releases a signficant amount of radiation into the environment should be recorded, so the first table is probably not the best way to record this information. Fell Gleaming^talk 13:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Filtering the table of nuclear accidents to remove things that are not both nuclear and accidents would be highly appropriate. The steam explosion at the Japanese plant is and accident, but is not nuclear - it could have happened regardless of the presence or absence of nuclear material. The entry about cracked heat exchangers being replaced is nuclear, but not an accident - discovering and correcting a potentially dangerous situation is not an accident by any definition of the word. Your point about wanting to know about all the accidents is very valid, but what is an accident? A solid definition must be maintained, otherwise it becomes a list of "incidents that a person or persons feel should be called an accident, but which may or may not actually be accidents." Nailedtooth (talk) 15:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

The table of nuclear accidents includes multiple cases of plant shut-down due to one or other malfunction. Shutting a plant down due to malfunction is anything but an accident. It is standard operating procedure. An "accident" might have ensued had the plants not been shut down. I must reiterate the assertion above, that this article has been compiled by an individual who is hostile to nuclear energy, and that it needs to be edited without bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Isitututu (talk • contribs) 18:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, I would add that the same table says it's about nuclear power plant accidents while it includes the Windscale fire and the Mayak accident, both of which happened at military plutonium production facilities, not nuclear power plants.Nailedtooth (talk) 16:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Pelindaba

Surely the two incidents which occurred at Pelindaba during 1996 and 2009 qualify as accidents? The first accident referred to as a "radiation fire" resulted in severe exposure of workers, including the death of Harold Daniels and several others, from radiation burns and/or cancers see http://www.pmg.org.za/mp3/2007/070620pcenviro1.mp3 The second accident on 16 March 2009 referred to a "leak of radioactive gases" from the Pelindaba facility reported by NECSA. Abnormal levels of gamma radiation associated with Xenon and Krypton gases were detected, causing an evacuation of staff and an emergency to be declared. From experience in the anti-nuclear movement in SA, the official reporting tends to downplay dangers and since there are no independent evaluations, it is impossible to get a proper assessment. Frankly I am alarmed by the reference to other workers who suffered the same fate as Harold Daniels and the only reason we know this is because of a Parliamentary Monitoring Report of a committee meeting in which his widow pleads for assistance. Ethnopunk (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

2005 Koeberg SCRAM

On November 11, 2005, the plant undergoes an emergency shut down following an incident related to power controls within the plant. The incident is thought to be to a routine SCRAM. Then on the evening of the 23rd November 2005, a routine inspection of the backup safety system revealed a below-specification concentration of an important chemical, which had resulted in a controlled shutdown of the reactor. On Christmas Day, 2005, an 8cm (about the size of a finger) loose bolt finds its way into the rotor of Unit 1, causing damage to some of the 105 bars that line the device, and putting the generator out of action for three to nine months, depending on the availability of spares. Investigations are still underway as to how this occurred, or whether the two incidents are related. http://www.melkbos.com/directory/Koeberg_nuclear_power_station/incidents/LooseBolt/LooseBolt_2005.html Ethnopunk (talk) 22:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

2010 Koeberg accident

September 2010, 91 workers at Koeberg are contaminated by Cobolt-51 dust following an accident at the power station. Conflicting reports also suggest the Cobolt-58 (58Co) isotope with a half-life of 70.86 days. [11]The discrepancy suggests the kind of decay and resulting radiation exposure. Eskom announces a "review" of the situation which will "recommend further steps to avoid recurrence." [12] It is not known whether this incident is related to the 2005 scram incident. http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Koeberg-workers-contaminated-20100920 Ethnopunk (talk) 22:56, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

It's unclear to me how you managed to spell Cobalt wrong.... MatchesMalone (talk) 15:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

POV tag

Many of my recent efforts to bring more of a balance and comprehensiveness to this article have been undone. The net effect of these reverts has been to play down the extent of nuclear accidents, with material which supports this whitewashing being continually pushed to the front of the article. For example a long paragraph which compares "the historical safety record of civilian nuclear energy with the historical record of other forms of electrical generation" features early on, even before a list of nuclear accidents has been given. Comparisons are normally given at the end of an article and this treatment is just one example of bias and pushing a particular agenda. So I've had no choice but to add a POV tag. Johnfos (talk) 03:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If you feel the article is "playing down" the history too much, perhaps your edits had played them up too much? An encyclopedia entry should strive for a neutral, unemotional tone at all times. This article had (and still has) histrionic elements in it that are sorely out of place. I'm not the editor who inserted the comparison to other power forms, but that does seem a very valuable addition to put the article in context. Certainly far more valuable than a bald list of events. Fell Gleaming^talk 16:25, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Sovacool is listed umpty times as unreliable source, but i dont find any argument, not on the talk, not on his page, so i delete it. An this pov tag, is it still necesarry? -- eiland (talk) 15:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Tag removed because I fucking felt like it. This article isn't biased, and I don't feel like waiting around for months arguing about this shit when in the end, it doesn't really matter. However, that's not to say the article couldn't use a rewrite anyway.

hell yeah -- eiland (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Why do you think it doesn't matter? MatchesMalone (talk) 15:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Comparison with Coal and Other Power

It is right and proper to make these comparison. It is not, however, right and proper to compare the raw numbers without taking into account the vastly greater number of facilities involved and their vastly larger output. It is also clearly problematic to make the comparison at this point in time, when the scope of the Japan disaster is not yet known. This should be rewritten to compare on some reasonable basis, say deaths-per-megawatt, with the caveat that with the potential for rare larger-scale disasters, it is difficult to perform an accurate comparison due to the "fat tail" effect. It should also be mentioned that relatively local large-scale disasters (such as a nuclear release) have a much greater impact than distributed slow processes (such as deaths due to air pollution), and this makes comparisons difficult. Such comparisons are still necessary, imperfect though they may be when choices must be made. Depending on the assumptions one makes, nuclear may still win over coal, but the article as written constitutes a manipulation of the facts, a clear POV violation, and weakens the very point it tries to make by undermining its credibility. Bob Kerns (talk) 11:20, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Deliberately linking nuclear accidents to other accidents is eccentric and a highly suspicious view. Any issue such as "nuclear will win over coal" [Bob Kearns] is ulterior and disruptive.

All accidents should be listed, but with the details included, so users can select their own subsets according to their own criteria.

When looking at road safety - people do not usually compare this to deaths\accidents in war, or deaths\illness due to smoking. Nor do they construct strange scales such as death-per-dollar.

We should not allow strange biasses to corrupt Wikipedias presentatoins. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.10.76.15 (talk) 10:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

POV tag

The title of this article is Nuclear and radiation accidents, yet there is a remarkable resistance to actually listing and discussing such accidents. A lot of notable and relevant accidents have been removed from the page, see here and here, and so this article is no longer neutral. Johnfos (talk) 06:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, there is a lot of resistance against discussing or classifying "unofficial" accident's. The article merely supports the Nuclear Regulatory Regime which is controlled by governments and which engages in covert activity, including manipulation of data. Time to come clean about nuclear deaths in South AfricaEthnopunk (talk) 10:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If you read the notes on the edits that removed those entries, you'll see that they were removed because the list is supposed to be about "nuclear power plants" and both Windscale and the Mayak incident were at military plutonium production facilities, not electrical installations. This is the same point that has been made multiple times on this page alone; there needs to be clarity and consistency in what this article talks about, rather than simply making it a dumping ground for random nuclear-related accident infomation. If you want to propose a well defined scope for the article, please, by all means do so. Bemoaning the article without further action does little to help the situation.Nailedtooth (talk) 23:01, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree 190.51.159.171 (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Lists have been moved to separate pages, good work! Can someone elaborate on the POV tag? What exactly looks biased? --Sigmundur (talk) 10:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

How about comparisons made on an uneven footing? Serious POV violation -- a manipulation of statistics to create the impression that nuclear is safer than it actually is. Bob Kerns (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

This is the main article on nuclear and radiation accidents and it should cover the main accidents. Yet there are many serious accidents which are simply not mentioned here. For example the Windscale fire, the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain, is not discussed here. Efforts to list more accidents on the page have not met with success and so the POV tag was placed as the article is incomplete and understates the situation. Johnfos (talk) 22:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

While segregating Windscale from power generation accidents is justifiable, excluding it is not. Bob Kerns (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Could the original author please state the number of deaths in the History section by number of kilowatt-hours of electricity generated, rather than simply by "during the same time period?" This would serve to reduce the bias since the death toll would be normalized by the actual benefit of having each type of power generation. Similarly, where the article states that 57% of all accidents have occured in the U.S., is it possible that this is the case in the source material simply because accident reporting in the U.S. is required at a much lower level of "damage" than in other areas, or simply more readily available to the source? Given the ratio of nuclear power generation in the U.S. vs. the rest of the world coupled with the strict regulations compared to some other areas, it seems highly unlikely that a majority of accidents could occur in the U.S. especially since the Chernobyl accident. I would not be surprised were it since WWII until Three Mile Island, but SINCE Chernobyl?! Please, someone must have better statistics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.54.184.254 (talk) 21:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I felt the comparisons were so blatantly constructed to bias the results that the matter deserved its own section at the start of the talk page. Bob Kerns (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

As Johnfos has pointed out, the article is supposed to deal with "Nuclear and radiation accidents" and thus information on anything other than a power plant is completely justified. After all, the rubric under which this article falls is "Disaster Management," and such disasters encompass much more than mere energy generation. And very few outside the nuclear power or defense industries would claim that "Nuclear and radiation accidents" are not disasters. Surely the numerical scale measuring the severity of the disasters shows people that not all of them pose a major threat. And this scale is used by the industry itself!

Those of you who disapprove of the article's attempts to get the facts right on this aspect of all things nuclear and radioactive might consider writing an article on what you see as the benefits of these things. Then you can link to it within this article. Otherwise, as Johnfos has already pointed out, you are free to write information you feel would balance the perspective AFTER the initial facts, which is the typical encyclopedic way (and certainly Wikipedia's way) of doing things. If you fail to do this, you risk some form of discipline from Wikipedia administrators. Scrawlspacer (talk) 01:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

These type of plants require fuel and fuel processing. Windscale and Calder hall are linked by this The budget is one from the Government, the Arms and Power industy are linked by this fact. This technology was developed from the arms industry and therefore all incidents should be included —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.45.149.222 (talk) 11:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Quality And Credibility Of Publicly Available Information On Nuclear And Radiation Accidents

I would like to see a subsection here, or on an individual disaster's page, or an entire article, on the politics of providing open information on radiation levels and nuclear contamination. For example at Fukushima there is little, or conflicting, public data available on radiation levels immediately outside the plant, although this information is surely accurately known to TEPCO, the Japanese government, and the U.S. government. Can the authorities be believed? What is the quality of information being publicly released?Mbstone (talk) 23:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

The nuclear safety article says: According to Stephanie Cooke, it is difficult to know what really goes on inside nuclear power plants because the industry is shrouded in secrecy. Corporations and governments control what information is made available to the public. When information is released, it is often couched in jargon and incomprehensible prose, which makes it difficult to understand.

-- Johnfos (talk) 23:57, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

This link has radiation levels just outside Dai-ichi and much more! http://www.jaif.or.jp/english, beprepn, 66.116.62.178 (talk) 19:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Paragraph for discussion

I'm moving this paragraph here as it is too simplistic and one-sided:

Nuclear power has caused far fewer accidental deaths per unit of energy generated than several other major forms of power generation. Energy production from coal, natural gas, and hydropower have caused far more deaths due to accidents. It is impossible for a commercial nuclear reactor to explode like a nuclear bomb since the fuel is never sufficiently enriched for this to occur.

As the Comparisons section of the article says, it is relevant to consider not only number of fatalities, but disruption caused and economic cost, of various types of energy accidents. It is too simplistic to focus just on number of accidental deaths as the above paragraph does.

If you want to raise the the relationship between nuclear power reactors and nuclear bombs, there needs to be some discussion of the fact that nuclear power is a dual use technology, where many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can be used to make nuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so. When this happens a nuclear power program can become a route leading to the atomic bomb or a public annex to a secret bomb program. The crisis over Iran's nuclear activities is a case in point. Johnfos (talk) 19:14, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

The current intro is completely biased towards anti-nuclear arguments. The "disruption" argument is the POV of a single non-expert and not from a study. This is an article about nuclear accidents, not proliferation. We can add something regarding economic costs from accidents. I see no reason for exclusding this from the intro.Miradre (talk) 19:45, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I guess this sort of disagreement is to be expected. After all, nuclear power is a very controversial energy source, arousing strong feelings. I think one of the main things is that we don't simply push the World Nuclear Association/ industry line, which often has a lot of pro-nuclear "spin" associated with it. We need to incorporate a range of different views where they are based on reliable sources. Independent, well-credentialled, nuclear analysts such as Stephanie Cooke and Benjamin K. Sovacool are very valuable here.

Sovacool and Stephanie Cooke are not independent - they have made a living off of the anti-nuclear movement. Cooke is not well-credentialled. If you are going to post things from these anti-nuclear "spin" doctors, you should allow things from the pro-nuclear side too.SCStrikwerda (talk) 14:34, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

As time goes on and books about Fukushima are written and documentaries produced we will see just how serious and disruptive the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been. Even now, it is clear that the Japanese government has been unable to control the spread of radioactive material into the nation’s food, and "Japanese agricultural officials say meat from more than 500 cattle that were likely to have been contaminated with radioactive cesium has made its way to supermarkets and restaurants across Japan". Radioactive material has been detected in a range of other produce, including spinach, tea leaves, milk, and fish. We really shouldn't be trying to play down the impacts of nuclear power plant accidents. Johnfos (talk) 03:53, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The WNA is certainly allowed to present its view. WP:NPOV does not aim to present just a single view on an issue but all the major ones.

Just because one can detect trace amount of radioactivity, this does not mean that this is dangerous to humans. Or that nuclear power is dangerous when compared to the accidents from coal mining, natural gas explosions, or mass deaths from hydropower dam collapses.Miradre (talk) 10:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, detecting radiation is not significant - a gieger counter can detect radiation in most natural things. We shouldn't be trying to play down the effects of nuclear power accidents, but we shouldn't try to play up the effects either. SCStrikwerda (talk) 14:39, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The WNA material comes from their self-published website. Self-published sources are not generally considered reliable on WP.

Radiation levels at Fukushima are significant. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that levels of radioactivity exceeding legal limits had been detected in milk produced in the Fukushima area and in certain vegetables in Ibaraki. On 23 March, Tokyo drinking water exceeded the safe level for infants, prompting the government to distribute bottled water to families with infants. Radiation checks led to bans on some shipments of vegetables and fish. 50,000 households were evacuated after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea.Johnfos (talk) 16:49, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Self-published generally refers to a single individual. It is different when it is an organization produces something. Material from Greenpeace is not considered self-published, for example.

Not sure what is your point about Fukushima? Coal mining and toxic pollution, natural gas explosions, and hydropower dam collpases still kill far more people.Miradre (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is INES Level 7 not because of loss of life, but because of wider consequences, which we are glossing over in the last sentence of the lead. Self-published websites are generally not considered reliable. Johnfos (talk) 02:41, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Hydropower causes large scale ecological and human disruptions upstream, dowmstream, as well as flooding a large area. WP:SPS does not list organizations as examples of self-published sources. Or if you prefer it is always posssible to list the sources the WNA uses.Miradre (talk) 02:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Non nuclear and/or radiation accidents in "Nuclear Power Plant accident" section from touchoilandgas.com source

Several extended outages of US commercial nuclear plants are listed on the list of "Nuclear Power Plant Accidents". Many of these incidents come from the touchoilandgas.com source http://www.touchoilandgas.com/ebooks/A1ioj0/eandpvol7iss2/resources/134.htm. These extended outages cost millions in replacement equipment and/or extended outage lost generation, but they did not cause property damage and did not have any releases of nuclear fission products or radiation.

The technical validity of the "Touch Oil and Gas" source is weak and includes non-nuclear and non-radiation events that it describes as "accidents".

Examples:

September 2, 1996 Crystal River, Florida, US Balance-of-plant equipment malfunction forces shutdown and extensive repairs at Crystal River Unit 3

Crystal River 3 is a PWR, and a malfunction on the BOP side of the plant is no different than a coal plant having a BOP equipment failure. This is NOT, however, a nuclear/radiation accident at all.

September 15, 1984 Athens, Alabama, US Safety violations, operator error, and design problems force six year outage at Browns Ferry Unit 2 March 9, 1985 Athens, Alabama, US Instrumentation systems malfunction during startup, which led to suspension of operations at all three Browns Ferry Units

Browns Ferry came close to an accident in its the 1975 Unit 1 fire. However, no nuclear or radiation accident has ever occurred then. The shutdown of all units in 1985 was initiated for various managerial, safety, and operational issues. Again, there were no actual accidents.

February 16, 2002 Oak Harbor, Ohio, US Severe corrosion of control rod forces 24-month outage of Davis-Besse reactor

The incident at Davis-Besse was not control rod corrosion; it was corrosion of the reactor vessel head. While this was a near-miss scenario of a control rod ejection / LOCA, no actual accident occurred. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goodmapd (talk • contribs) 23:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I've now changed the title of the Table to "Nuclear power plant accidents and incidents", to be more inclusive. An updated list appears in Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power, published by World Scientific, which is a very reliable source. Johnfos (talk) 02:13, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't really help much, because now the list goes from being about nuclear and radiation accidents to "a thing happened somewhere near atoms". Nailedtooth (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Treatment method

Perhaps Notre Dame Thorium Borate-1 can be mentioned at a suitable article ? 91.182.161.57 (talk) 08:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Kyshtym not in list?

I was wondering why the Kyshtym disaster isn't in the list of +$100m/multiple fatalities. I understand that because it happened in a closed city there are fewer sources. However it seems very unlikely that neither condition for inclusion would be met. Estimates go as high as 8000, with recent studies attributing 50 cancer deaths to the disaster. It would be very unlikely if it was less than 2. The scope of the event, also makes it unlikely that less than $100 million was damaged. Should it be included? possibly with a footnote?Pinfix (talk) 17:48, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

"Kyshtym disaster" is mentioned in the lead, and mentioned below as Mayak, which I've now changed for consistency. It is not in the nuclear power section as this was not a nuclear power plant, but a radiation contamination accident. Johnfos (talk) 22:57, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I knew there had to be a reason, seemed like it would have been an unlikely oversight. And thanks for the update.I added the word Russia, because i probably am not the only one who tried to find the answer to the question "what was that major nuclear accident called in russia" by searching for the word "russia" in this page. Other entries similarly mention the countryPinfix (talk) 23:20, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Soviet Union?

The "Lost Source" section describes the "Soviet Army" leaving behind material in 1996, how is this possible when it had been dissolved for four years by then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.162.166 (talk) 10:58, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Ambiguous caption on Hanford site photo

The caption reads: "The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960."

The reference to "the nation" means the USA, but this isn't clear from the context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.166.135.59 (talk) 13:57, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

IAEA Defintions

Does this article's opening text "A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility." Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, or reactor core melt."[4] The prime example of a "major nuclear accident" is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactivity are released, such as in the Chernobyl Disaster in 1986." accurately use IAEA defintions as it claims to?

A formal glossary of IAEA terminology is given in http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1290_web.pdf; this does not define the term "radiation accident" or "nuclear and radiation accident" but does define a specific meaning for the term "nuclear accident" as "Any accident involving facilities or activities from which a release of radioactive material occurs or is likely to occur and which has resulted or may result in an international transboundary release that could be of radiological safety significance for another State."

This IAEA glossary also defines the over-arching term "accident" as "Any unintended event, including operating errors, equipment failures and other mishaps, the consequences or potential consequences of which are not negligible from the point of view of protection or safety."

Hence, for example, the Chernobyl Accident is clearly a "nuclear accident" under those IAEA terms but reactor accidents with more localised consequences only fall under the term "severe accident" which covers "Accident conditions more severe than a design basis accident and involving significant core degradation."

The IAEA glossary also makes distinctions between "events" and "accidents" on the basis that the term accident applies to the end result of an event, i.e. where an event is an unitended occurrence.Knobeeoldben (talk) 11:04, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

October 5, 1966

October 5, 1966 should be removed because it doesn't fit the criteria. If it stays then Canadian nuclear accidents NRX(December 12,1952) and the NRU (24 May 1958) should be included as well. President Jimmy Carter was at the Chalk_River_Laboratories#1952_NRX-incident.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 13:16, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

The Fermi meltdown cost more than $100 million to repair and restart. That is one of the listed criteria. Rmhermen (talk) 22:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

No one put the 100 million cost in the table.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

and I can't see a source for the $100 million number.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The source is in the List of civilian nuclear accidents: [9]. Rmhermen (talk) 04:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay I put the number and reference into the table.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 14:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

NRX is listed in the lower list of accidents but not the NRU accident.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 19:24, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I just looked up that reference and confirmed the $132M figure is on there. For a quick sanity check, here's what the same site says in its short article on U-235 Fission: "In one of the most remarkable phenomena in nature, a slow neutron can be captured by a uranium-235 nucleus, rendering it unstable toward nuclear fission. A fast neutron will not be captured, so neutrons must be slowed down by moderation to increase their capture probability in fission reactors. A single fision event can yield over 200 million times the energy of the neutron which triggered it!" This causes me to question the general veracity of that site - if the above text were literally true, then fast reactors such as Fermi 1 would not be possible. I'd also have hoped that staff in a university physics department would understand the difference between neutron absorption and neutron capture.Tealsnepal (talk) 19:36, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Chernobyl

I don't believe the Chernobyl should be listed here as a "criticality acident". Classifying it as such is inconsistent with normal definitions of criticality accidents (e.g. as in LA-13638 https://www.orau.org/PTP/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf) because events on operating reactors, i.e. where criticality is the intended condition, are normally excluded. So although a nuclear chain reaction was involved at Chernobyl, the subtle difference is that there was a very severe "reactivity fault" - a loss of control as opposed to a transition to an unintended critical state.Knobeeoldben (talk) 19:24, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Addition grounds for excluding Chernobyl are that, although the IAEA definition of a criticality accident is "an accident involving criticality" most authorities regard the definition of criticality accidents as applying to accidents where criticality occurred when or where it was not intended. Hence the Tokai Mura accident - in a fuel manufacturing facility - was an example of somewhere where criticality was never intended (i.e. a process criticality accident) and the Sarov accident was an example of a case where criticality occurred by accident during the preparation of a criticality experiment (which may not have been intended to do other than get close to the point of criticality). At Chernobyl, the reactor was operating under power, so criticality was definitely intended - the accident occurred because control of the reactor was lost, leading to massive power excursion. Although the resulting sequence of events at Chernobyl did (reportedly) include the onset of prompt criticality, it does not make sense to start listing every accident on operating reactors as criticality accidents. I therefore think Chernobyl might qualify as a "reactor prompt critical accident" but such a distinction would be required, so as not to lump Tokai Mura and Chernobyl into the same category.

An additional (and more worthy contender) for the class of "reactor prompt critical accident" from the field of military reactors would be the K-431 submarine accident. In that case, criticality did occur when not intended; it has also been reported that the reactor achieved prompt criticality.Knobeeoldben (talk) 17:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

sine the section defines criticality accident as an "excursion" or "power excursion", I think you have undermined your own argument here. Rmhermen (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

My point is that, on that basis, any accident on a reactor that is (or has been) intentionally operating at power may count as a criticality accident, and this effectively broadens the term to cover both cases where criticality was intended as well as those where it was not. For example, the Three Mile Island accident involved a loss of post trip cooling, but the decay heat that damaged the core was only produced because the reactor had previously been operating at power, i.e. under conditions of criticality. So in practive it can be useful to distinguish between accidents where criticality occured but was not intended and those where criticality was intended.Knobeeoldben (talk) 18:00, 19 March 2014 (UTC) Also that section of the article currently starts with "A criticality accident (also sometimes referred to as an "excursion" or "power excursion") occurs when a nuclear chain reaction is accidentally allowed to occur in fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium." A chain reaction is normally an intended operating condition in a reactor. Knobeeoldben (talk) 18:08, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

These are all interesting points and they do point to some disagreement over what counts as a meltdown, criticality incident, or chain reaction. Maybe one way around this would simply be to recognize that it was a "Major Accident" (Level 7) as classified by the INES, the International Nuclear Event Scale.Bksovacool (talk) 10:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

International Nuclear Event Scale

Worldwide nuclear testing counts and summary

Operation Crossroads Test Able, a 23-kiloton air-deployed nuclear weapon detonated on July 1, 1946. This bomb used, and consumed, the infamous Demon core that took the lives of two scientists in two separate criticality accidents.

Radioactive materials were accidentally released from the 1970 Baneberry Nuclear Test at the Nevada Test Site.

In similar vein to the above, while interesting, does the data on nuclear tests really belong here, under the topic of accidents?Tealsnepal (talk) 19:08, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

There were many, many accidents, and some loss of life associated with nuclear tests that did not go as planned. Johnfos (talk) 06:02, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Johnfos here, sadly - there is a history of tests having large accidental consequences.Bksovacool (talk) 10:35, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Nuclear accident in Pennsylvania

I heard of an accident in PA which I am guessing it was a reactor leak I think it happened in the 50's or early sixties after this accident many dead farm animals were confiscated by the gov after that there was an increse in cancer that could have been connected Dudtz 22:10 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Dudtz, in the off chance you come back to this comment I have never heard of this event, but I have catalogued 99 historical nuclear power accidents and incidents here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/25/960044/-A-commentary-on-nuclear-power-accidents#. Maybe you're referring to another example on the list?Bksovacool (talk) 10:37, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Nuclear-powered submarine core meltdown mishaps

Is there any reliable source calling any of the incidents listed "meltdown mishaps". K-27, for example was scuttled deeper than an International Atomic Energy Agency requirement, no radiation leak has been found, and the idea that it was a meltdown is fiction. In K-429, control rods jammed after a sinking, and the reacter was left running at 0.5% power inadvertently, no radiation leak, and no meltdown. Calling these "meltdown mishaps" is massive exaggeration bordering on propaganda. 109.78.163.215 (talk) 11:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Nuclear reactor attacks

Why is this topic included in an article about accidents? Surely reactor attacks are deliberate acts and do not happen accidentally?Tealsnepal (talk) 18:58, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

As per the first sentence of the article, accidents here are broadly defined to include many types of mishaps. Johnfos (talk) 05:35, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

As a neutral observer there is merit to both points - we also have situations where an attack can be accidental, as when during the first wave of US air strikes in Iraq they hit a reactor by accident. Maybe the easiest solution would be to rename the page "Nuclear and radioactive accidents and incidents." The term "incident" can imply both intentional and unintentional events.Bksovacool (talk) 10:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

As per Prof Sovacool's suggestion, I have now moved the page to "Nuclear and radioactive accidents and incidents". Johnfos (talk) 08:07, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Political

> In the 2003 book, Brittle Power, Amory Lovins talks about the need for a resilient, > secure, energy system: > > The foundation of a secure energy system is to need less energy in the first place, > then to get it from sources that are inherently invulnerable because they're diverse, > dispersed, renewable, and mainly local. They're secure not because they're American > but because of their design. Any highly centralised energy system -- pipelines, > nuclear plants, refineries -- invite devastating attack. But invulnerable alternatives > don't, and can't, fail on a large scale.[114]

This is a very political quote, highly POV and factually very dubious. Yet its left as a final statement without comment. 82.31.66.207 (talk) 05:38, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

unable to display links to archives

The talk page archives would be far more useful if there were links to them to make them more accessible. I tried to do this here [10], according to instructions at User:MiszaBot/Archive_HowTo, but no links to the archives were displayed (perhaps the links are only added at each archiving action?). At least 1 archive exists Talk:Nuclear and radiation accidents/Archive 1. Could someone show me how to display, in the header, links to the archives?--Wikimedes (talk) 19:17, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

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Collection of recent accidents to include

Many nuclear and radiation accidents are accumulated here:

https://blog.fefe.de/?q=UNS+SICHER

The blog is written in German - some of the links are English news articles though. Even though the layout is archaic is one of Germany's most read blogs (#10 in 2011) and it also has a German Wikipedia entry: de:Fefes Blog.

It would be nice if someone could go through it and add all the missing accidents.

--Fixuture (talk) 20:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Blogs are not usually regarded as reliable sources on WP. The "missing accidents" don't seem very notable to me, and not suitable for inclusion in this main article on nuclear accidents. If some of the entries are to be selectively used, they would have to be put in a relevant sub-article, see Category:Nuclear accidents and incidents. Johnfos (talk) 15:53, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@Johnfos: I know that and I wasn't suggesting to use the blog as a source. I was suggesting to use the blog's accumulation of reports of nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents to find reliable sources. Why don't these "missing accidents" seem very notable to you (and I doubt that you read through many of those)? Also what about getting all the entries into a table (should be done anyway for easy sorting and better clarity etc) and adding a rough severity-rating to the table so that it can be a very long list and at the same time people can easily see which of those were truly serious? --Fixuture (talk) 17:57, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi, as I say this is the main article, and we already have many WP sub-articles relating to Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents. Many of these lists/tables include, where possible, the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) rating which shows the relative severity of the accident. So let's not reinvent the wheel. Johnfos (talk) 19:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@Johnfos: Alright - didn't know there were additional articles for these. This article's title makes it seem like it encompassed all accidents and incidents of that type (maybe it should be moved?). Anyway I hope that the link is useful for anyone intending to complete these lists - I probably won't link it again on the other pages' talk pages. --Fixuture (talk) 17:47, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

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