Читать книгу Disaster Response and Recovery - David A. McEntire - Страница 43

A nuclear hazard results from the presence and potential threat of radioactive material. Nuclear power plants provide electricity for communities, businesses and individual citizens. Although these facilities produce nuclear wastes that must be disposed of, they pollute less than the power plants running off of coal. Nevertheless, nuclear wastes are also a problem and these nuclear hazards can also be extremely deadly and troublesome. Nuclear power plants create health risks because radiation can injure or kill people if it is accidentally released into the environment. This potential was witnessed in 1979 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Because of a leak in the equipment that purifies water entering the turbines, a backup system should have been activated. Unfortunately, an employee had shut this secondary system off during maintenance, which caused the system to overheat. A warning light did not illuminate as it should have, and radioactive material was released into the containment building. In time, an employee noticed what was taking place and closed a valve to reverse the unfolding chain of events. No one was killed in the incident. However, the public became extremely alarmed at the lack of information during the warning and evacuation process. The limited impact on humans was not the case at the Chernobyl reactor in the former Soviet Union. After various mistakes and mechanical failures, many of those responding to the hazard died and thousands had to be evacuated. Nearby areas are still somewhat dangerous today, and cancer has affected those that failed to leave as requested by the government.

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the Fukushima disaster was a significant event that involved a nuclear power plant in central Japan in 2011. The damages caused by a prior earthquake and tsunami resulted in a power failure and flooding of the reactors. The loss of generators and circulating pumps created a nuclear meltdown and hydrogen explosion. A fear of the unfolding radiation leak necessitated the evacuation of 154,000 people. Workers were able to resolve the issue, but only after 2 employees died and 20 others were injured and exposed to dangerous radiation levels. This event illustrated the inherent dangers of industrial hazards.