Daniel Stewart

 Accidents in a nuclear plant can range from minor emissions of radioactivity to catastrophic releases such as: - widespread radiation sickness - untold numbers of cancers - scores of human deaths - long-lasting environmental contamination

 A Nuclear power plant located near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania  which suffered a partial meltdown because of equipment failure and flawed design  The steam generator shut down automatically because of a lack of power in its feed water pumps, eventually the valve on top of the generator opened in response you the buildup of pressure.  The valve was not closed, and 250,000 gallons of radioactive water was pumped into a tank in an auxiliary building.

 This tank overflowed, and the water let off xenon and krypton gases.  These toxic gases would have exploded the building. To prevent this, radioactive air was pumped into our atmosphere.  About 30 people died within the first few months

 Nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic  The engineers disabled the power plants safety systems, withdrew the control rods, shut off the flow of steam to the generators, and decreased the flow of coolant water in the rector.  This caused the reactor to heat up and the extra steam that was produced could not escape.  Steam explosive then blew the 2000 ton top off the reactor, the reactor melted down, and a fire was ignited in graphite, burning for days.

 This explosion killed 31 people and put countless others in the surrounding countryside at risk for future cancer deaths  Considered to be the worst case of nuclear power plant disasters  The radiation was supposedly one hundred times the radiation fallout from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 1945.

 As a result of the two incidents the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has upgraded safety standards  Also created a new generation of nuclear reactors with built in passive safety features rather than active safety

 r r   Environmental Science Book By Richard T. Wright