Dejana Vukadinović
BBC journalist
The latest conflict in the Middle East Israel and Iran has once again raised fears of potential nuclear disasters.
He recalled the gruesome images of people dying from the effects of radiation after the Chernobyl tragedy in the 1980s.
Israel is June 13 attacked Iran, targeting nuclear facilities across the country, claiming that Tehran intended to make an atomic bomb.
Iran has since retaliated by launching rockets and missiles at Israel.
Israel has targeted nuclear facilities on several occasions since June 13, and the situation escalated when America also used 'bunker bombs' on June 21. in the attack on nuclear facilities in Iran.
Over the past decades, several nuclear tragedies have called into question the global safety of nuclear technology and the control that people have over it.
Here are a few of the nuclear disasters with severe consequences.
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Nevada (SAD), 1945.
The world's first nuclear weapon detonation occurred in New Mexico desert.
During World War II, the US government launched the Manhattan Project, recruiting scientists and engineers from across the country to live and work at a secret research center in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, they created the world's first atomic bomb.
Previously, in 1945, a fatal accident occurred due to carelessness when the so-called "critical system" which was used to safely test the reactivity of a plutonium core.
A few days after the accident, one of the scientists died of massive organ failure.
One of the most serious nuclear accidents in the US occurred in 1979 in Pennsylvania.
Due to technological failures accompanied by a series of human errors, the reactor core at the nuclear power plant partially melted. Three Mile Island.
Small amounts of radioactive gases were released, there were no casualties, but the conclusion of the federal investigation was that the accident could have been prevented.
Damaged reactor has since been closed.
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Chernobyl (USSR), 1986.
In the late 1980s, one of the greatest nuclear tragedies in human history occurred.
Engineers are April 26, 1986... shut down power to some systems in reactor number four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
The power outage slowed down the turbines that pumped cooling water to the reactor, and internal pressure rose.
A steam explosion blew the lid off the reactor, exposing the core to the atmosphere, which led to the release of a large amount of radioactive material.
It was estimated that this was 400 times greater than when it was thrown. atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan in 1945.
Two workers at the power plant were killed immediately, and in the following months another 29 people died from acute radiation poisoning, out of 134 who received the same diagnosis.
The day after the explosion, Pripyat, the city near which the nuclear power plant was located, was evacuated, and an "exclusion zone" or "zone of containment" was established around the reactor site. prohibited area of 30 kilometers.
Radioactive material spread over large parts of Europe, including Sweden and Germany, the data is The French Center for Nuclear Research and the Swedish Nuclear Energy Agency.
The disaster prompted the world to reexamine global nuclear safety standards.
The tragedy is believed to be one of the reasons that accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Years later, Chernobyl has gained new residents.
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Kyshtym (USSR) - 1957.
Another nuclear tragedy occurred in the Soviet Union.
It is considered the third worst nuclear disaster in history, after Chernobyl and Fukushima, although nothing was known about it for decades.
A major explosion occurred on September 29, 1957, at the Mayak nuclear power plant near the town of Kyshtym in the Ural Mountains in the central part of the then USSR.
There was no official statement from the authorities at the time, and the explosion is considered one of the most dangerous secret nuclear energy leaks of the 20th century.
The cause of the explosion was a failure of the cooling system in the liquid nuclear waste tank, which caused heat to build up, the encyclopedia explains. Britannica.
The released radioactive smoke extended more than 300 kilometers northeast of the site, in what would later become known as the "Eastern Ural Contaminated Areas".
Since the results were covered up, it is not possible to say with certainty how many people were killed, but according to some later estimates, approximately 200 died and more than 10.000 people were exposed to high levels of radiation.
The details of the tragedy were revealed two decades later by the exiled Soviet scientist Zhores Medvedev.
Moscow did not officially acknowledge the disaster until the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, and the environmental consequences are still present.
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Windscale (United Kingdom) 1957.
Just a month later, the first serious nuclear accident in the history of the United Kingdom (UK) occurred.
A fire broke out in one of the reactors of the nuclear plant. Wind vane in northwest England, intended for the production of plutonium for military purposes.
It was in progress. Cold War and countries were racing to develop nuclear weapons.
The fire lasted approximately 16 hours, resulting in the release of radioactive materials, primarily iodine-131, into the atmosphere, the encyclopedia writes. Britannica.
The fire broke out after technicians tried to increase the temperature of the reactor core to speed up production without an adequate risk assessment.
No immediate deaths were reported, but the British government later estimated that hundreds of people may have developed thyroid cancer as a result of exposure to radioactive iodine.
In order to preserve Britain's nuclear reputation in those years, details of the accident were not made public until the 1980s.
Official reports at the time revealed that the fire was much more serious and that a technical miscalculation almost led to a large-scale explosion.
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Vinča (Yugoslavia), 1958.
A nuclear accident was also recorded in the former Yugoslavia, known as Winch accident.
Ten years after the Institute for Nuclear Sciences was founded in Belgrade, in 1958, six scientists were exposed to an unknown dose of radiation, which was then assumed to be lethal.
Just a few months earlier, 17. May The first Yugoslav nuclear reactor was completed, and was personally switched on by Josip Broz Tito, the president of the SFRY.
It was long believed that the case was being covered up, but historian Dragomir Bondžić denied these allegations.
"The state and Vinča leadership probably wanted to cover it up, but it was not possible, because it was a major incident in which more than thirty people were irradiated, and six to a significant extent," Bondžić told the story years later, indicating that there was news in the daily newspaper Politika.
It was concluded that the human factor and the technical imperfection of the reactor led to the accident, which was published in the Vinca newsletter as early as 1961. Bondžić told 2022.
The six irradiated people were transferred to the Curie Institute in Paris for treatment the day after the accident.
Their treatment will be remembered, as it was the first bone marrow transplant in the world - only one did not survive.
"I wasn't scared, but I knew something terrible had happened and that we would have to struggle a lot to recover," he apologized years later Radojko Maksić, one of them.
Three years after the Chernobyl disaster, the then Yugoslav authorities introduced a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants, which is still in force because Serbia inherited it.
In recent years There is talk of the potential introduction of a larger number of small modular reactors for the use of nuclear energy, but everything is at the consideration level for now.
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Krško (Slovenia), 2008.
The Institute for Nuclear Sciences "Boris Kidrič" in Vinča was opened due to the needs of the Yugoslav nuclear program that began in 1950.
The product of that program is the first and so far only nuclear power plant in the former Yugoslavia.
It was built in Slovenia, three kilometers from the town of Krško, due to a lack of energy in the then republics of Slovenia and Croatia.
It is officially open. 1983, but the reactors stopped working almost 70 times over the next six years due to various failures.
The power plant was closed in 1991 due to the war in Slovenia, and after the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia, it remained a point of contention between Slovenia and Croatia.
They are arguing about the use and distribution of the power plant's costs.
The padlock was placed a second time. 2008. When the coolant leaked, Slovenian authorities claimed there were no consequences outside the plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rated the incident as zero, which on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), is a "deviation", with no adverse effects on the environment.
Due to increased leakage of the main system inside the container, Krško was placed under quarantine for several months as a precaution. 2023. temporarily closed.
Fukushima (Japan), 2011.
The magnitude 2011 earthquake that struck Japan in XNUMX triggered a tsunami and led to the second largest nuclear disaster.
Devastating earthquakes began on March 11, 2011, with the epicenter in the city of Fukushima.
The earthquake and tsunami disabled the cooling systems of three reactors at the TEPKO Daiichi nuclear power plant.
As a result, their cores melted and large amounts of radioactive material were released into the air and water.
Watch the video about the Fukushima disaster
There were allegedly no direct consequences for the health of the population, a United Nations panel concluded in 2011.
Optimistic was also a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) two years later.
This nuclear disaster will not contribute to an increase in cancer rates in the region, but many are not returning to the homes they abandoned after the tragedy.
In 2018, Japanese authorities announced that one worker had died after being exposed to radiation.
A decade after the disaster, the former heads of the nuclear power plant operator have been ordered by a court to pay 94,5 billion euros for failing to prevent it.
The consequences of this tragedy have not yet been eliminated, and many young Japanese are demanding millions in compensation, claiming they got cancer from radiation.
See: Water released from Fukushima nuclear power plant - what's in it and is it safe
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