Reactor meltdown

Causing a nuclear reactor meltdown after taking over the control room... 

The battle over nuclear power waxed hot and heavy for several years, swaying back and forth as incidents unfolded. The publication of the government-sponsored Reactor Safety Study in 1975, which showed that there would be very modest consequences from nearly all reactor accidents, was a positive event. The report concluded that the average number of fatalities from a meltdown would be about 400 and that there might be one meltdown in every 20,000 years of plant operation, or 0.02 deaths per year versus about 25 deaths per year due to air pollution from a coal-burning plant.8 It received little notice outside the scientific community. The movie The China Syndrome (released in 1979), which implied that a reactor meltdown accident would have— not possibly might have—very horrible consequences, was an important negative event. 

The primary source of radionuclides produced in the fission process and found in the environment is atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. The public has been exposed to these and other radionuclides for five decades, but there has been a substantial decline in atmospheric testing in the past two decades. Therefore the major source of fission product radionuclides in recent years has been from nuclear accidents. A nuclear reactor meltdown could release a spectrum of radionuclides similar to that of a nuclear bomb explosion, but the ratios of nuclides would greatly differ for the two cases. The reason for the differences in ratios of radionuclides is that during the reactor operation the long-lived radionuclides tend to build up progressively, whereas the... 

High flux radionuclide production reactor meltdown... 

Some air pollutants are transported far beyond their points of release. For example, otherwise pristine areas have received acid precipitation originating from industrial smokestack emissions hundreds of miles away. Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa has been detected in South America, and radioactive debris from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown has been deposited in countries throughout Europe. 

Fast Reactor Meltdown Accidents Using Bethe-Tait Analysis... 

NP3 Nuclear Power Insufficient reactor cooling (leading to reactor meltdown) 4 3 3... 

FAST REACTOR MELTDOWN ACCIDENTS USING BETHE-TAIT ANALYSIS... 

R. B. Nicholson, Methods for determining the energy release in hypothetical reactor meltdown accidents. APDA-150 (1962). 

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