Elite Facts Presents
9 Nuclear Disasters That Shook The World
9. Palomares B-52 Crash
On January 17, 1966, an American B-52 bomber
embarked on a mission from Seymour Johnson
Air Force Base, North Carolina. The aircraft
was carrying four Type B28 hydrogen bombs.
The mission was part of the Cold War U.S.
Operation Chrome Dome. The plane was scheduled
to travel east across the Atlantic Ocean and
Mediterranean Sea towards the European borders
of the Soviet Union. The flight time required
two mid-air refueling sessions over Spain.
During the second aerial refueling, the B-52
bomber contacted the KC-135 tanker, while
flying at 31,000 feet (9,450 m). The nozzle
of the refueling boom hit the top of the B-52
fuselage, breaking the longeron and snapping
off the left wing. The KC-135 was completely
destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing
all four crew members. The B-52 broke apart,
killing three of the seven crew members aboard.
The aircraft and the nuclear weapons crashed
to earth near the fishing village of Palomares,
part of Cuevas del Almanzora municipality,
in the Almeria province of Andalucía, Spain.
The conventional explosives in two of the
nuclear bombs detonated upon impact, dispersing
plutonium over nearby farms, residential areas,
and woods. It was estimated that 2-square-kilometers
of land was severely contaminated by radioactive
plutonium. Of the four B28 hydrogen bombs,
three were found on land near the small fishing
village of Palomares. The fourth bomb fell
into the Mediterranean Sea, and was recovered
intact after a 2½ month-long search. It was
located at a depth of 2,900 feet (880 m).
To defuse public alarm about the contamination,
the Spanish minister of information and tourism
Manuel Fraga and the U.S. ambassador Angier
Biddle Duke swam on nearby beaches in front
of press. The U.S. ambassador first swam at
Mojácar and then the pair swam at the Quitapellejos
beach in Palomares. Four days after the accident,
the Spanish government announced that a NATO
aircraft would no longer be permitted to fly
over Spanish territory, either to or from
Gibraltar. On January 25, 1966, the U.S. announced
that it would no longer fly over Spain with
nuclear weapons, and on the 29th the Spanish
government formally banned U.S. flights over
its territory that carried such weapons. Millions
of dollars were spent on the radioactive cleanup.
However, 45 years after the accident radioactive
material remains. In 2004, a study revealed
that there was still significant amounts of
contamination present in certain areas, and
the Spanish government subsequently expropriated
some plots of land, which would have otherwise
have been slated for agriculture or housing.
In early October 2006, the Spanish and United
States governments agreed to decontaminate
the remaining areas. Since the study began,
reports have indicated that snails and other
wildlife have been observed with unusual levels
of radioactivity. Two years after the Palomares
nuclear disaster, another B-52 bomber involved
with Operation Chrome Dome crashed. The plane
was also carrying a load of four hydrogen
bombs. The nuclear accident became known as
the 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 nuclear crash.
During the incident, a fire broke out in the
navigator’s compartment of a U.S. B-52 near
Thule Air Base, Greenland. The plane crashed
7 miles (11 km) from the air base, rupturing
its nuclear payload of four hydrogen bombs.
The nuclear weapons landed in North Star Bay,
Greenland, resulting in widespread radioactive
contamination. The incident caused outrage
and protests in Denmark, as Greenland is a
Danish possession. After the accident, the
United States and Denmark launched an intensive
clean-up and recovery operation, although
the decontamination effort was complicated
by Greenland’s harsh weather. Tons of contaminated
ice and debris were shipped and buried in
the U.S. One of the nuclear weapons remains
lost to this day. The U.S. project Chrome
Dome was discontinued immediately after the
incident. This nuclear accident directly led
to more stable nuclear warhead development
in the United States.
8. Windscale Fire
In 1946, the Second World War ended and the
United States government passed legislation
that removed all nuclear weapons programs
in other countries. Many British scientists
participated in the Manhattan Project, and
the British government did not want to be
left behind in the nuclear arms race, so they
created a nuclear weapons program. Nuclear
reactors were constructed near the tiny village
of Seascale, Cumberland, and were known as
Windscale Pile 1 and Windscale Pile 2. The
facilities produced plutonium for the first
British atom bomb. After the successful testing
of the British nuclear weapon, the U.S. designed
and exploded a hydrogen bomb, which requires
tritium. Britain did not have any facility
to produce tritium and decided to use the
Windscale piles. Higher temperatures are required
to produce tritium. The decision was made
to reduce the size of the nuclear cooling
fans used at the site. This enabled the production
of tritium, but it also created three separate
hot spots in Pile 1. The precise cause of
the accident is not clear, but on October
10, 1957 parts of the nuclear reactor overheated
and a fire started in the Windscale Pile 1.
The resulting fire burned for days, damaging
a significant portion of the reactor core.
The nuclear fire released radioactive gases
into the surrounding countryside, primarily
in the form of iodine-131. It was estimated
that 20,000 curies of iodine-131 and around
1,000 curies of caesium-137 were released.
However, like any nuclear accident, claims
have been made that the contamination was
much more severe. No people were evacuated
from the surrounding area, but there was a
concern that milk might be dangerously contaminated.
Milk distribution was banned in a 200-square-mile
(520 km2) area around the reactor for a month.
Thousands of gallons of contaminated milk
were dumped in the Irish Sea. Subsequent investigations
have suggested that the official records may
have been altered in an attempt to cover up
the possibility that during the radiation
leak the wind was blowing out to sea, significantly
increasing the contamination dose to Ireland
and the Isle of Man. The direct damage to
the surrounding area is unclear and a 1987
report by the National Radiological Protection
Board predicted the accident would cause as
many as 33 long-term cancer deaths. Windscale
Pile 1 was unsalvageable and after the removal
of some damaged fuel cell rods it was left
alone. In 2008, the British government announced
that it would continue decontaminated the
site. No air-cooled reactors have been built
since the Windscale fire disaster. Modern
technology uses water as a cooling agent.
The Windscale fire was considered the world’s
worst reactor accident until the Three Mile
Island incident of 1979. The Three Mile Island
nuclear disaster was a partial core meltdown
in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear
Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
However, the details of the Soviet Kyshtym
nuclear disaster that occurred on September
29, 1957 was not made public for many years.
7. Soviet Submarine K-219
The K-219 submarine was a ballistic missile
sub used by the Soviet Union during the Cold
War. It carried 16 missiles equipped with
an estimated 34 nuclear warheads. On October
3, 1986, the submarine was on patrol 680 miles
(1,090 km) northeast of Bermuda when the seal
in one of the missile hatch covers failed.
This allowed seawater to leak into the missile
tube and react with residue from the missile’s
liquid fuel, producing nitric acid. The K-219
suffered a subsequent explosion and fire in
the missile tube. The Soviet Navy claimed
that the leak was caused by a collision with
the submarine USS Augusta. However, the United
States Navy has challenged the claim because
the K-219 had previously experienced a similar
problem, and one of the submarines missile
tubes was disabled and welded shut because
of the accident. After the explosion occurred
in silo six, the remains of the RSM-25 rocket
and its two nuclear warheads were ejected
into the sea. The vessel quickly surfaced
to permit its twin nuclear reactors to be
shut down. The submarine was then strapped
to a Soviet freighter, and an attempt to tow
the vessel was made. However, the flooding
had reached a point beyond recovery and the
K-219 sank to the bottom of the Hatteras Abyssal
Plain, in 18,000 feet (5,500 m) of water.
The K-219’s full arsenal of nuclear weapons
and reactors went down with the vessel. In
1988, the Soviet hydrographic research ship
Keldysh positioned itself over the wreck and
reported that the submarine was sitting in
the upright position on the bottom of the
ocean. It had broken into sections and it
appeared that several missile silo hatches
had been forced open, and the missiles, along
with the nuclear warheads they contained,
were gone. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
privately communicated news of the disaster
to U.S. President Ronald Reagan before publicly
acknowledging the incident. The K-219 Soviet
submarine nuclear accident was one of the
most controversial events of the Cold War.
6. Goldsboro B-52 Crash
On January 24, 1961 an American B-52 bomber
was on a 24-hour airborne alert mission over
the Atlantic seaboard. The aircraft was carrying
two Mark 39 nuclear weapons onboard. During
the mission, the B-52 was scheduled to meet
with a tanker for mid-air refueling. While
the plane was being refueled, the B-52 captain,
Major W.S. Tullock, was notified that his
aircraft had a leak in its port wing fuel
cell. The plane was directed to assume a holding
pattern off the coast until the majority of
fuel was used up. However, the captain soon
reported that his plane had lost 37,000 pounds
(17,000 kg) of fuel in three minutes. He was
immediately ordered to land at Seymour Johnson
Air Base, which is located in Goldsboro, North
Carolina. As the plane descended to 10,000
feet, the pilots were no longer able to control
the aircraft. The captain ordered the crew
to eject, which they did at 9,000 feet (2,700
m). The plane broke apart as it spiraled to
the ground and the nuclear weapons were separated
from the craft. The wreckage of the plane
and its two nuclear warheads landed in a 2-square-mile
(5.2 km2) area of tobacco and cotton farmland
near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five crewmen
attempted to parachute to safety, but three
died. One of the nuclear weapons discovered
had become active. Five of the six arming
devices on the nuclear warhead activated,
causing it to carry out many of the steps
needed to arm itself, such as the charging
of the firing capacitors and the deployment
of a retardation parachute. The pilot’s
safe and arm switch was not activated preventing
detonation. However, nuclear material was
released into the atmosphere. The second bomb
plunged into a muddy field at around 700 miles
per hour. It disintegrated and the bombs tail
was discovered about 20 feet (6.1 m) under
the earth. Some of the nuclear weapon was
recovered, including the tritium bottle and
all the plutonium. However, excavation was
abandoned due to uncontrollable ground water
flooding. Most of the thermonuclear stage,
containing uranium, was left in the North
Carolina ground. It is estimated to lie around
55 feet (17 m) below the earth. The Air Force
purchased the land to prevent interference
with the nuclear remnants.
5. Goiania Accident – September 13, 1987
More than 240 people were exposed to radiation
when a junkyard dealer in Goiania, Brazil,
broke open an abandoned radiation therapy
machine and removed a small highly radioactive
cake of cesium chloride. The accident occurred
on September 13, 1987. The environment and
surroundings were seriously contaminated.
Many buildings had to be demolished. 4 died
in this accident. Many children got attracted
to the bright blue of the radioactive material,
touched it and rubbed it on their skin, resulting
in the contamination of several city block.
4. Castle Bravo – March 1, 1954
Bikini Atoll, Micronesian Islands in the Pacific
Ocean was the site of more than 20 nuclear
weapons tests between 1946 and 1958. Castle
Bravo was the codename given to the first
U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen
bomb. The test was performed on March 1, 1954,
at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. When the
weapon was detonated, an explosion took place,
leaving a crater of 6,500 feet (2,000 m) in
diameter and 250 feet (75 m) in depth. Castle
Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device
ever detonated by the United States, with
a yield of 15 Megatons which was far exceeding
the expected yield of 4-6 Megatons. This miscalculation
led to a severe accidental radiological contamination
ever caused by the United States. In terms
of TNT tonnage equivalence, Castle Bravo was
about 1,200 times more powerful than the atomic
bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki during World War II. Moreover, the
radiation cloud contaminated more than seven
thousand square miles of the surrounding Pacific
Ocean, including small islands like Rongerik,
Rongelap and Utirik. These islands were evacuated,
but generations to come where affected. Natives
have since suffered from birth defects. A
Japanese fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryu Maru,
also came into contact with the nuclear fallout,
causing illness to all crew members with one
fatality. Fish, water and land were seriously
contaminated, making Castle Bravo one of the
worst nuclear accidents.
3. Chalk River Nuclear Accident – 1952
Chalk River Laboratory (CRL) is a site of
major research and development to support
and advance nuclear technology, in particular
CANDU reactor technology. On December 12th,
1952, a reactor shutoff rod failure, combined
with several operator errors, led to a major
power excursion of more than double the reactor’s
rated output at AECL’s NRX reactor. INES
rated the incident as level 5. A series of
hydrogen gas explosions hurled the four-ton
gasholder dome four feet through the air where
it jammed in the superstructure. Thousands
of curies of fission products were released
into the atmosphere, and a million gallons
of radioactively contaminated water had to
be pumped out of the basement and “disposed
of” in shallow trenches not far from the
Ottawa River. The core of the NRX reactor
could not be decontaminated; it had to be
buried as radioactive waste. Young Jimmy Carter,
later U.S. President, then a nuclear engineer
in the U.S. Navy, was among the hundreds of
Canadian and American servicemen who were
ordered to participate in the NRX cleanup
following the accident.
2. Kyshtym, Russia 1957
The Kyshtym Nuclear disaster was a radiation
contamination incident that occurred on 29
September 1957 at Mayak, a Nuclear fuel reprocessing
plant in the Soviet Union. It measured as
a Level 6 disaster on the INES, making it
the third most serious Nuclear disaster ever
recorded behind the Chernobyl Disaster and
Fukushima Daiichi Disaster. The event occurred
in the town of Ozyorsk, a closed city built
around the Mayak plant. Since Ozyorsk/Mayak
was not marked on maps, the disaster was named
after Kyshtym, the nearest known town.
1. Chernobyl, Ukraine 1986
The Chernobyl Nuclear disaster is widely considered
to have been the worst power plant accident
in history, and is one of only two classified
as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear
Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima,
Daiichi disaster in 2011). The battle to contain
the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe
ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and
cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. The official
Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths has been
disputed and long-term effects such as cancers
and deformities are still being accounted
for.
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