In the early 1970s, a highly contentious debate over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the " China syndrome", received coverage in the popular media and technical journals. The large size of nuclear reactors ordered during the late 1960s raised new safety questions and created fears of a severe reactor accident that would send large quantities of radiation into the environment. There was also a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in 1966. 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. This led to the introduction of the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which was "an implicit admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were unwilling to assume without federal backing". The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 encouraged private corporations in the United States to build nuclear reactors and a significant learning phase followed with many early partial core meltdowns and accidents at experimental reactors and research facilities. In 2006, it said: "Since 2001, the ROP has resulted in more than 4,000 inspection findings concerning nuclear power plant licensees' failure to fully comply with NRC regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation, and NRC has subjected more than 75 percent (79) of the 103 operating plants to increased oversight for varying periods". The United States Government Accountability Office reported more than 150 incidents from 2001 to 2006 of nuclear plants not performing within acceptable safety guidelines. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. accidents was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. In the U.S., at least 56 nuclear reactor accidents have occurred. Because nuclear reactors are large and complex, accidents onsite tend to be relatively expensive. Property damage costs include destruction of property, emergency response, environmental remediation, evacuation, lost product, fines, and court claims. The accidents involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of coolant, and occurred during both normal operation and extreme emergency conditions (such as droughts and earthquakes). Globally, there have been at least 99 (civilian and military) recorded nuclear reactor 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 major energy accidents that must be reported), totaling US$20.5 billion in property damages. Relatively few accidents have involved fatalities. ![]() Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. The most serious of these was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. According to a 2010 survey of energy accidents, there have been at least 56 accidents at nuclear reactors in the United States (defined as incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage). Erosion of the 6-inch-thick (150 mm) carbon steel reactor head, caused by a persistent leak of borated water, at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |