FYI, Another Ruter's Prompted by Japan Criticality

[Robin_Siskel@notes.ymp.gov]

Chronology of nuclear accidents worldwide
Updated 12:26 PM ET September 30, 1999


LONDON (Reuters) - A nuclear accident at a Japanese uranium processing plant
Thursday exposed workers to radiation and may have triggered "abnormal
reactions" that could be continuing.
Following is a chronology of major nuclear incidents over the last 40 years.
Some have come to light only since the end of the Cold War.

Oct. 7, 1957 - Fire destroyed the core of a plutonium-producing reactor at
Britain's Windscale nuclear complex -- since renamed Sellafield -- sending
clouds of radioactivity into the atmosphere. An official report said the leaked
radiation could have caused dozens of cancer deaths.

1957/8 - A serious accident occurred during the winter of 1957-58 near the town
of Kyshtym in the Urals. A Russian scientist who first reported the disaster
estimated that hundreds died from radiation sickness.

Jan. 3, 1961 - Three technicians died at a U.S. plant in Idaho Falls in an
accident at an experimental reactor.

July 4, 1961 - The captain and seven crew members died when radiation spread
through the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered submarine. A pipe in the
control system of one of the two reactors had ruptured.

1965 - The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission deliberately produced a low intensity
radioactive cloud from a nuclear reactor over Los Angeles.

Oct. 5, 1966 - The core of an experimental reactor near Detroit partly melted
when a sodium cooling system failed.

Oct. 17, 1969 - In Saint-Laurent, France, a fuel-loading error sparked a partial
meltdown at a gas-cooled power reactor.

1974 - Reported explosion in a Soviet breeder plant at Shevchenko on the Caspian
Sea.

Dec. 7, 1975 - An accident occurred at the Lubmin nuclear power complex near
Greifswald on the Baltic coast in former East Germany. A short-circuit caused by
an electrician's mistake started a fire. Some news reports said there was almost
a meltdown of the reactor core.

March 28, 1979 - America's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Three Mile
Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A partial meltdown of one of the
reactors forced the evacuation of residents after radioactive gas leaked into
the atmosphere.

Aug. 7, 1979 - Highly enriched uranium spewed out of a top-secret nuclear fuel
plant in Tennessee. Around 1,000 people were contaminated with up to five times
as much radiation as they would normally receive in a year.

April 25, 1981 - Officials said around 45 workers were exposed to radioactivity
during repairs to a problem-ridden plant at Tsuruga, Japan.

November 1983 - Britain's Sellafield plant accidentally discharged radioactive
waste into the Irish Sea, prompting environmentalists to demand its closure.

Aug. 10, 1985 - An explosion devastated the Shkotovo-22 ship repair facility
which services Soviet navy nuclear-powered vessels. Ten people were killed and
many died later from radiation exposure.

Jan. 6, 1986 - One worker died and 100 were injured at a plant in Oklahoma when
a cylinder of nuclear material burst after being improperly heated.

April 26, 1986 - Date of the world's worst nuclear accident. An explosion and
fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant spewed radiation over much of Europe.
Thirty-one people died in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Hundreds of
thousands of people were moved from the area and a similar number were believed
to have suffered from the effects of radiation.

March 24, 1992 - Radioactive iodine and inert gases escaped into the atmosphere
after a loss of pressure in a reactor channel at the Sosnovy Bor station near St
Petersburg in Russia, triggering international concern.

November 1992 - In France's most serious nuclear accident, three workers were
contaminated after entering a nuclear particle accelerator in Forbach without
protective clothing. Executives were jailed in 1993 for failing to take proper
safety measures.

November 1995 - At Chernobyl, serious contamination occurred when fuel was being
removed from one of the reactors. One person received the equivalent of a year's
permitted radiation.

November 1995 - Two to three tons of sodium leaked from the secondary cooling
system of Japan's Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in an accident.

March 1997 - A fire and explosion at the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear
Fuel Development Corporation reprocessing plant at Tokaimura contaminated at
least 35 workers with minor radiation in Japan's worst atomic accident to date.



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