Nuclear Disasters

The first thing that comes to my mind about Nuclear Disaster is the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Pripyat, in Ukraine, which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. On 26 April 1986, a power surge during a test procedure resulted in a criticality accident, leading to a powerful steam explosion and fire that released a significant fraction of core material into the environment, resulting in a death toll of 56 as well as estimated 4,000 additional cancer fatalities among people exposed to elevated doses of radiation. As a result, the city of Chernobyl was largely abandoned, the larger city of Pripyat was completely abandoned, and a permanent 30 kilometers exclusion zone around the reactor was established. The main cause of the disaster was the poorly design of the plant, and also the disqualification of the control rods.

The other nuclear disaster is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, it was an event that happened in Japan in March of 2011. A major earthquake triggered a 15 meter tsunami that disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors and caused a nuclear accident. Within the first three days all three cores were largely melted and high radioactive releases occurred over the next three days but after two weeks they were stable with water addition and by July they were being cooled with recycled water from a new treatment plant. In addition to having to cool down the reactors, it was essential to try to prevent the release of radioactive materials, in particular the contaminated water leaked from the three units.

The nuclear disasters have so much negative impacts on both organisms and environment that we should always think about how to make them safe before we build a nuclear power plant. One way that to make sure that is safe is to check the design of the power plant, so have scientists from other countries to work together to see if that design actually works. And then, we should also make the outer cell to be tough enough, so if the reactor explodes we could still be able to minimize the danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale#Level_7:_Major_accident

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster