Читать книгу Industrial and Medical Nuclear Accidents - Jean-Claude Amiard - Страница 51

Propulsion using nuclear reactors is not limited to military applications. Various ships and civilian satellites are equipped with various types of engines in order to move. Accidents have also occurred.

Thus, spacecraft equipped with radioisotope power reactors or generators can contaminate aquatic environments directly by intact re-entry into the atmosphere and loss at sea, such as the generator of the lunar module used in the Apollo 13 lunar program (²³⁸Pu – 1.6.10¹⁵ Bq), which fell back in April 1970 into the South Pacific Ocean to a depth of about 6,100 m (USAEC, 1971, in [EIS 73]). Contamination of aquatic environments can be indirect, as in the case of the SNAP 9A series satellite, which vanished when it re-entered the atmosphere in 1964. Its power generator consisted of 629.10¹² Bq of ²³⁸Pu. Up until then, ²³⁸Pu in the upper atmosphere (33,000 m) had been generated solely by earlier nuclear explosions, but 4 months after the accident, this ²³⁸Pu had increased significantly. By the end of 1970, 95% (592.10¹² Bq) of the ²³⁸Pu from this satellite had fallen to the surface of the land and oceans. Previously, two other American satellites carrying a power generator (SNAP-3A – ²³⁸Pu – 59.2.10¹² Bq series) launched in 1961 had vanished into the atmosphere. Similarly, the Soviet Cosmos-954 satellite was destroyed on January 24, 1978, and radioactive debris was introduced into part of Canada’s Far North into certain bodies of water such as Great Slave Lake in Fort Reliance Bay. Fission products were sought in lichens growing on the debris fallout zone (900 km x 45 km corridor) in the northern Canadian territories. The environmental impact was minimal [TAY 79].