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Energy and Environment
Published in T.M. Aggarwal, Environmental Control in Thermal Power Plants, 2021
The U.S. Army also had a nuclear power program, beginning in 1954. The SM-1 Nuclear Power Plant, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was the first power reactor in the U.S. to supply electrical energy to a commercial grid (VEPCO), in April, 1957, before Shippingport. The SL-1 was a U.S. Army experimental nuclear power reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho. It underwent a steam explosion and meltdown in January 1961, which killed its three operators. In Soviet Union in The Mayak Production Association there were a number of accidents including an explosion that released 50–100 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste, contaminating a huge territory in the eastern Urals and causing numerous deaths and injuries. The Soviet regime kept this accident secret for about 30 years. The event was eventually rated at 6 on the seven-level INES scale (third in severity only to the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima).
Fission Products, Xenon Transients, and Reactor Accidents
Published in Robert E. Masterson, Introduction to Nuclear Reactor Physics, 2017
The reactor accident in Chernobyl, Russia, was caused by a number of unfortunate events, but one of the most unfortunate of them was the buildup of Xenon-135 in the reactor core. In the sections that follow, we would like to briefly discuss what the reactor operators did at Chernobyl in response to this buildup of Xenon-135, and how it ultimately caused the reactor accident to occur. Another major cause of the accident at Chernobyl was a positive power coefficient of the reactivity, which we introduced to the reader in Chapter 17. The Chernobyl accident was by far the worst recorded accident in the history of the nuclear power business, and in perspective, the accidents at Fukushima in Japan and Three Mile Island in the United States were relatively mild in comparison. Until the Fukushima accident occurred in 2011, the Chernobyl accident was the only commercial reactor accident to have ever been awarded a rating of 7.0 on the INES scale, which is the internationally accepted scale by which the severity of all reactor accidents is measured. In comparison, the accident at TMI only received a rating of 5.0 on the INES scale. Furthermore, the INES scale is similar in design to the Richter scale, which is commonly used to measure the intensity of earthquakes. When using these scales, the numbers assigned to specific events do not increase in linear proportion to the severity of the events. Instead, they increase geometrically in powers of 10 as the event severity increases.
Containment Buildings and the Nuclear Steam Supply System
Published in Robert E. Masterson, Nuclear Engineering Fundamentals, 2017
In any event, most containment buildings are designed so that it is very difficult to release radiation from a power plant even after a serious reactor accident. The radiation simply stays inside of the containment building until it decays into more stable substances, which are not generally radioactive. The amount of time that this takes to reach this stable state depends on severity of the reactor accident as well as the type of fuel that is used. After a small accident (Categories 4 and 5 on the INES scale), the reactor can generally be brought back into service in a year or two after the accident occurs. The INES scale and its implications are discussed in Chapter 19. Only two or three reactor accidents in recent history—including Chernobyl and Fukushima—have achieved the highest level of severity (level 7) on the INES scale. In these types of accidents, large amounts of radiation were released into the surrounding environment. The other accident at TMI only received a rating of 5 out of 7 on the INES scale.
Numerical Investigation into the Temperature Profile of a PHWR Channel Containing a Disassembled Fuel Bundle During a Postulated Accident Condition
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2023
Ketan Ajay, Ravi Kumar, Akhilesh Gupta
The nuclear power plant’s safe operation has been marred by major accidents that caused severe damage to the reactor core. For reference, higher-level accidents categorized by the International Atomic Energy Agency are (1) Fukushima Daiichi, Japan (March 2011), International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) Level 7; (2) Chernobyl, Ukraine (April 1986), INES Level 7; (3) Three Mile Island, United States (March 1979), INES Level 5; (4) Lucens, Vaud, Switzerland, (January 1969), INES Level 5; and (5) Kyshtym, Russia (September 1957), INES Level 6.[3]