Читать книгу Industrial and Medical Nuclear Accidents - Jean-Claude Amiard - Страница 74

Environmental impacts are not necessarily related to a nuclear accident. Thus, the abandonment of uranium mines is often synonymous with radioactive contamination by uranium.

However, the most serious environmental and health impacts result from accidents at nuclear reactors or spent fuel reprocessing plants.

The health impacts, out of any accident, were significant for miners working in the period from 1940 to 1970. Since then, precautions have been taken to extract as much radon as possible from mine galleries.

Until 1995, the number of accidents involving nuclear reactors was two to three accidents per year (Figure 2.7).

Figure 2.7. Number of accidents involving nuclear reactors or causing high irradiation over 5-year periods from 1945 to 1995 (modified from Sanderson et al., 1997 in [MAC 00])

The 99 nuclear accidents, fatal and/or costing more than US$50,000, between 1952 and 2010 resulted in 4,100 deaths (including 4,056 from the Chernobyl accident alone). Compared to deaths caused by other energy sources, nuclear energy is the second most deadly source of energy supply (after hydroelectric dams, including the failure of the Shimantan hydroelectric plant in China causing 171,000 deaths on August 8, 1975) and above oil, coal and natural gas production systems [SOV 08]. A total of 57 accidents (as defined by Sovacool [SOV 10]) have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and nearly two-thirds (56 out of 99) of all nuclear accidents have occurred in the United States, refuting the notion that serious accidents are consigned to the past or to non-American countries that have neither the control of modern technology nor the effective supervision of the nuclear industry [SOV 10].