Nuclear accidents

Definition, Scale, Protection & Prevention

By Nikolaos Christoglou gr39 No5310

Definition
The International Atomic Energy Agency defines a nuclear or radioactive accident as an event which has dire consequences to the environment and the population around it. Accidents vary from leaks of radiation energy to nuclear core meltdowns.

Nuclear event Scale

Are categorized in a scale of 1-7 Events of low significance (1-3) are termed incidents Events of high significance (4-7) are termed accidents This method is the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES)

The Scale

Ionizing radiation hazard symbol

Protection- Drugs
Potassium iodide protects against thyroid cancer (a usual effect of nuclear accidents) The idea of stockpiling the drug potassium iodide, has been debated since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa. Proponents renewed discussions of the proposal after the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine, a 1986 accident that is now blamed for thousands of thyroid cancers, mostly in people who were in utero or younger than 2 years old at the time. Those people, regardless of their age, who took potassium iodide at the time were protected. The new recommendation is far more complex, establishing different recommended doses and different conditions for use for eight categories of people: newborns; infants younger than 3 years old; children 3 to 12; youths 12 to 18; adults 18 to 40; adults older than 40; and women who are lactating or are pregnant.

Protection- Drugs
Beta-1,3 Glucan: Extracted from the cell walls of bakers yeast it is a potent immune enhancer. It activates important macrophages and is also an anti oxidant. Studies showed that glucan was a powerful protectant against a lethal dose of radiation.

Protection- Drugs
Polyamines: The free radicals generated by ultraviolet (UV) or ionizing radiation can attack cellular lipids, proteins and DNA. Endogenous free radical scavengers such as glutathione and the polyamines (e.g, spermidine and spermine) can inhibit the action of ROS (peroxides and hydroxyl radicals).

Protection- Action
The harmful effects of an accident can be divided into: Early onset: severe radiation burns or build up leading to radiation poisoning and death. Only protection to this is the immediate evacuation of local population and the proper equipment provided to the cleaning teams. Victims of early effects are usually less than that of long term.

Protection- Action
Long term: the environmental pollution that destroys crops, wildlife, makes the area inhospitable and the stigmatism of subsequent generations genetic material which leads to mutations. Protection against such effects includes the proper evacuation of radiation infected territories until the radiation drops and the diligent prenatal genetic screening of the population.

Prevention
The two sites where a nuclear accident can occur are: Nuclear power plant: After the Chernobyl incident the safety standards have increased significantly, with the majority of facilities cores encased within thick concrete walls and additional safety measures, which have not been put to the test yet. The Fukushima incident in Japan proves the unpredictability of such events.

Prevention
The concept of defense in depth is fundamental to the safety of nuclear installations. Nuclear safety does not rely on one line of defense but is achieved using a range of complementary means. All safety activities, whether organizational, behavioral or equipment related, are subject to layers of overlapping provisions, so that if a failure should occur it would be compensated for or corrected without causing harm to individuals or the public at large.

Prevention
The key objectives of defense in depth are: To compensate for potential human and component failures; To maintain the effectiveness of the barriers by averting damage to the plant and to the barriers themselves; and To protect people, including workers in the nuclear industry, and the environment from harm in the event that these barriers are not fully effective. To meet these objectives, the strategy for defence in depth is, above all, about preventing accidents. However, if prevention fails, the strategy limits an accidents potential consequences as much as possible and prevents any escalation to more serious conditions. This means ensuring a low chance of failures in the systems used, combined with redundancy in design, so that if one system fails other independent, diverse lines of defence ensure an accident does not result (defence in depth).

Prevention
Five levels of defence in depth The objective of the first level of protection is the prevention of abnormal operation and system failures. If the first level fails, abnormal operation is controlled or failures are detected by the second level of protection. Should the second level fail, the third level ensures that safety functions are further performed by activating specific safety systems and other safety features. Should the third level fail, the fourth level limits accident progression through accident management, so as to prevent or mitigate severe accident conditions with external releases of radioactive materials. The last objective (fifth level of protection) is the mitigation of the radiological consequences of significant external releases through the offsite emergency response. The efficacy of the mitigation measures will depend on their overall effectiveness and the speed of their implementation.

Prevention
Nuclear weapons manufacture, storage and disposal facilities: no known accidents of this kind have occurred. Problems include matters of improper storage and leakage to surrounding environment. Nuclear weaponization (and care of thereafter) is a sensitive subject and one which is not openly discussed, making the establishment of regulations difficult.

Not an accident

Notable events with score 7

The Chernobyl incident which occurred in 1986 in Ukraine. That accident killed 56 people directly, and caused an estimated 4,000 additional cases of fatal cancer, as well as damaging approximately $7 billion of property.

Notable events with score 7

The Fukushima I incident where an earthquake triggered a shut down of the three active reactors at the Power plant. The ensuing tsunami crippled the site, stopped the backup generators, and caused a blackout. The subsequent lack of cooling led to explosions and meltdowns.

Kyshtym, Soviet Union (now Russia) Sept.29, 1957 INES Rating: 6

The Soviet Union was also home to the second-most disastrous nuclear accident, at the Mayak Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Kyshtym. IAEA classified the event as a Level 6 Disaster, which is a "serious accident. Soviet scientists were frantically trying to catch up to the Americans after World War II when they began construction of the Mayak nuclear facility. Soviet nuclear knowledge had many holes, so it was impossible to know whether some decisions made in the construction were safe. As it turned out, many of those decisions seriously compromised the plant's facility. Initially, the plant's operators simply dumped the nuclear waste into a nearby river, before a storage facility for that waste opened in 1953. The storage facility began to overheat, and a cooler was soon added, but it was poorly constructed. In September 1957, the cooling system in a tank containing about 70 tons of radioactive waste failed, and the temperature started to rise. This caused a non-nuclear explosion of dried waste. There were no immediate casualties as a result of the explosion, but the IAEA found there had been a significant release of radioactive material into the environment. The radioactive cloud spread out for hundreds of miles to the northeast.

Kyshtym, Soviet Union (now Russia) Sept.29, 1957 INES Rating: 6

The Soviet government released little information about the accident, but was forced to evacuate 10,000 people in the affected area after reports surfaced of people's skin literally falling off. The radiation is estimated to have directly caused the deaths of 200 people due to cancer.