Five nuclear pollution incidents in history
After the explosion of nuclear power plant units caused by the earthquake in Japan, people are very concerned about the possible nuclear pollution. By the end of 1970s, human beings had suffered five nuclear pollution incidents, and the book "5000-year disaster records of the world that we must know" described in detail the causes and consequences of these five nuclear pollution incidents.
Japan was bombed by atomic bomb.
Hiroshima Prefecture in the southwest of Honshu, Japan gradually developed into a military stronghold in the mid-19th century. German fascism, the chief culprit of World War II, declared unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. On July 26th, the United States, Britain and China jointly issued the Potsdam Declaration, ordering Japan to surrender unconditionally and quickly, but the Japanese government turned a deaf ear.
In order to force Japan to surrender quickly, at 8: 15 on August 6, 1945, the US military dropped an atomic bomb codenamed "Little Boy" in downtown Hiroshima, Japan. "Little Boy" is a uranium bomb with a length of 3 meters and a diameter of 0.7 meters. It contains 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and weighs about 4 tons. The TNT equivalent is 15,000 tons. The atomic bomb exploded in the air 600 meters above the ground, instantly rolling up a huge mushroom-shaped smoke cloud, and Hiroshima city suddenly became a scorching sea of fire.
In this man-made tragedy, the intense light waves generated by the atomic bomb explosion made thousands of people blind. The high temperature of 1 billion degrees makes everything go up in smoke; Radiation rain makes some people slowly die in the next 20 years; All the buildings were destroyed by the strong wind formed by the shock wave.
According to statistics, before the tragedy, the population of Hiroshima was more than 340,000, and most people near the explosion center died. On that day, more than 88,000 people died, and more than 51,000 people were injured and missing. More than half of the buildings were destroyed to varying degrees. However, this tragedy did not make the Japanese government aware of the seriousness of the problem and still went its own way, so the US military chose to continue.
At 11: 02 am on August 9, 1945, the US military carried out the second atomic bomb attack on Japan, targeting Nagasaki. This attack dropped the atomic bomb "Fat Man" into the center of Nagasaki, which was absolutely as destructive as the last time. "Fatty" is a plutonium bomb with a length of about 3.6 meters, a diameter of 1.5 meters and a weight of about 4.9 tons. The TNT equivalent is 22,000 tons and the explosion height is 503 meters. "Fat man" uses a complicated "implosion" detonation system, which consists of four different fuzes: air pressure, timing, radar and impact.
The tragedy caused half of the population in Nagasaki to be killed or missing that day, and more than 60% of the buildings were destroyed.
Although the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were originally intended to force Japan to surrender as soon as possible, they objectively brought indelible pain to the local people. Even the survivors suffered from radiation sequelae such as cancer, leukemia and skin burns. But more is the trauma of the soul, which can never be washed away.
2. Chernobyl nuclear disaster
In 1970, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine of the former Soviet Union was completed. The nuclear power plant provided 10% of electricity to Ukraine and consisted of four nuclear reactors.
People generally don’t doubt products such as 3C certification, or products that are well-known. But the big explosion on April 26, 1986 changed the Soviet people’s trust in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and changed all this.
On the night of April 25th, 1986, the staff of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station were preparing to carry out the safety test of Reactor No.4, and the test officially started in the early morning of April 26th. In order to improve the work efficiency during the test, they deliberately violated the operating regulations: a large number of control rods were pulled out, which regulated the temperature of the reactor core. Pulling them out was a fatal mistake. Because there is no control rod to adjust the temperature, the core is overheated. At 1: 23 a.m. on 26th, the staff was lucky enough to operate illegally again, and pressed panic button to shut down the nuclear reactor. At this time, there was a conflict between the original intention and the actual situation, and they wanted to stop the test immediately, but the sudden interruption of power supply caused the main cooling system to stop working, and the reactor was out of control! The water in the core was immediately decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen by strong radiation, and the high concentration of hydrogen and oxygen immediately led to the big explosion of the No.4 nuclear reactor.
The 2000-ton steel roof was lifted by the explosive force, and a huge fireball suddenly rose from the reactor, so disaster came. In this way, 8 tons of nuclear fuel fragments and high-level radioactive materials were ruthlessly thrown into the dark night sky in an instant, and the high temperature and high-speed radiation dose of 2000 degrees Celsius also swallowed everything around. There were cries and shouts on the ground and a sea of fire.
Half an hour later, rescuers rushed to the No.4 reactor, and all the fire engines and air force helicopters were used. Nearly 5,000 tons of fire-fighting materials such as dolomite, sand, boride, soil and lead were thrown from the air, and the fire was gradually extinguished.
In the first few days of this nuclear explosion, many workers and people who participated in the aftermath of the accident were killed or injured due to high radiation. According to the survey results, as many as 300 people died from high-dose radiation, and 30 people died on the spot. After the disaster was slightly controlled, a large number of workers were rushed to the Chernobyl clean-up site. The former Soviet government mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to prevent radioactive substances from entering the groundwater. For this reason, a black building with a length of 160 meters, a width of 110 meters and a height of 75 meters was built with steel, and all the remaining materials of the No.4 nuclear reactor were sealed inside. This building was called the "sarcophagus" because of this catastrophe.
After the disaster, residents living within a radius of 30 kilometers around the nuclear power plant were evacuated urgently, and this area was turned into an isolated area, and no one was allowed to enter or leave casually. Subsequently, the government evacuated a large number of residents in Puri Piater, with as many as 130,000 evacuated residents.
In order to avoid unnecessary panic, the Soviet Union tried to hide the accident in the past, because the relationship between the Soviet Union and the West was very bad at that time, so it did not inform its neighbors. However, the leaked radioactive dust is inhuman and does not have such a clear concept of national boundaries. Instead, it keeps drifting over northern Europe, eastern Europe and western Europe, and the harm areas are increasing. The wave of radiation swept by the wind brought a flying disaster to the whole of Europe.
European countries have been aware of the strange situation of the air one after another and issued statements one after another. Sweden claims that the radioactive dust in its atmosphere is five times higher than usual; Denmark claims that the radiation level in the air is four times higher than usual; Finland has the highest radiation level, and the radiation level in its north and central parts is 10 times higher than normal. Romania, Yugoslavia and other countries have also been harmed to varying degrees. Because these countries have conclusive evidence and strongly protested to the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union had to announce the truth of this nuclear explosion.
This nuclear explosion is the biggest nuclear disaster since World War II. Fifty-five thousand people died in the rescue work, 150 thousand people were disabled, and a large number of ecological refugees were also caused.
3. Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident
At 4: 00 a.m. on March 28th, 1979, in the operation room of the reactor group 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station in Pennsylvania, USA, there was a great uproar and confusion. A large amount of radioactive material overflowed after two hours.
It was not until six days later that the core temperature began to drop and the steam bubbles disappeared-the threat of hydrogen explosion was relieved, and the reactor was finally paralyzed. The American people were all shocked when they learned the news, and residents near the nuclear power plant were even more frightened. About 200,000 people were evacuated from this area. People have held rallies and demonstrations, demanding that nuclear power plants be stopped or shut down. The governments of the United States and some western European countries have also had to re-examine their plans to develop nuclear power.
The unexpected nuclear leakage accident was caused by the failure of the water pump in the secondary circuit: the workers failed to open the valve of the accident cooling system after overhaul a few days ago, which led to the automatic operation of this system, and the water in the secondary circuit was still cut off. When the temperature and pressure in the reactor rise in this case, the reactor will automatically stop and the pressure relief valve will automatically open, releasing part of the steam-water mixture in the core. At the same time, when the pressure in the reactor dropped to normal, the pressure relief valve failed to return to its seat automatically due to the fault, so that the core coolant continued to flow out and the pressure dropped below normal, so the emergency core cooling system was automatically put into operation, but the operator made a wrong judgment, instead, the emergency core cooling system was closed and water injection into the core was stopped. The above management and operation errors are intertwined with equipment failures, which makes a small failure expand rapidly and sharply, and finally causes a serious accident of core melting. Fortunately, in this accident, the main engineering safety facilities were automatically put into use, and the reactor had several safety barriers (fuel cladding, primary pressure boundary and containment, etc.), and there were no casualties. Only three workers were exposed to the allowable dose slightly higher than half a year.
The three mile island accident has relatively little impact on the environment. This is the first and most serious commercial nuclear accident in the United States, which changed the center and direction of the nuclear industry in the United States, made the American people strongly appeal to the government to take action to stop the construction of nuclear power plants, and widely publicized the dangers of using atomic fuel to generate electricity.
4. Nuclear explosion of Ural storage tank
On September 29th, 1957, in the Urals region, a large nuclear industry gathering area of the Soviet Union, an underground nuclear waste storage tank between the cities of Keshtam and Chelyabinsk suddenly exploded. The violent explosion sprayed radioactive dust and substances into the sky like a volcanic eruption, and its power was 100 times that of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945.
A 10-kilometer-diameter smoke cloud with radioactive element strontium 90 lifted off. More than 10,000 residents immediately evacuated from the polluted area. Maidevijeff, a geneticist in the former Soviet Union, estimated that several hundred people died of radiation a few days after the explosion, and at least 1,000 people died of radiation that year.
Due to the extremely bad weather, the strong wind blew the radioactive smoke clouds hundreds of kilometers away, resulting in 3000 square kilometers of nuclear pollution in the southern Urals, with no vegetation in the area and thousands of people suffering from radiation sickness. However, when the residents exposed to nuclear radiation were sent to the hospital, doctors did not know about radioactive nuclear medicine and how to treat the patients according to the amount of radiation received. As a result, many patients were on the verge of death. Thousands of people died one year after the accident, and tens of thousands died three years later.
As we all know, plutonium in nuclear waste is an insoluble element, and most of plutonium in nuclear waste in Ural region is absorbed by soil. When water soaks into the soil where plutonium is accumulated, plutonium reacts with water, triggering a chain reaction, and the water is quickly heated into steam, and the pressure of steam increases, resulting in a strong explosion, thus causing this appalling nuclear disaster.
When the nuclear waste disposal link was not solved, Khrushchev, then general secretary of the CPSU, ordered the furnace to be turned on in advance in order to compete with the Americans, regardless of the opposition of scientists. In order to save the cost of nuclear waste treatment, the Soviet authorities piled up nuclear waste in the forest areas of Urals, thus forming a large-scale radioactive waste storage site, leaving a major hidden danger.
All roads and railways leading to the area were closed for a year. A year later, a checkpoint was set up 50 kilometers outside the area, and all motor vehicles entering the area (which is limited to open) must be inspected, all windows closed, no photos allowed, and they must pass at the highest speed without stopping. From 1958 to 1968, residents in this area were not allowed to have children.
直到1978年，污染区还有20%的地方未能恢复生产活动。
1989年2月，即核事故发生后32年，苏联政府向国际原子能机构(IAEA)提供了有关该次事故的技术报告，终于将该次事故公布于众。其实，这是苏联政府迫于国内外舆论压力，不得已而为之。
苏联原计划在克什特姆镇邻近处建立一座快中子反应堆，在先拉斯诺亚尔斯克建造世界上最大的核废物库。这项计划在苏联国内引起了激烈的争论和抗议。可能是因为针对这次反核风波，苏联官方才公布了乌拉尔核事故的有关资料。
5.太平洋进行核试验：比基尼事件
1954年3月1日凌晨时分，位于太平洋比基尼环礁约160公里的公海上，日本“第5福龙丸”号渔船正在航行。此时在比基尼环礁上进行了氢弹核试验，天亮之前，天空被照得很亮，不久有烟柱升起。两个小时后，“福龙丸”的船员发现船上散落了大量氢弹爆炸后的灰，他们没有意识到，飘散到他们船上的，是具有辐射作用、可以对人体造成伤害的“死亡之灰”。
1954年3月14日，“福龙丸”回港后有关部门对船员们带回的“爆炸后落灰”进行了分析，才知道是美国研制的新型氢弹，美国正在研制秘密武器和进行核武器开发的事实因此被曝光。
At that time, there were 23 crew members on the "Fulong Maru", and all the crew members were immediately sent to Tokyo for treatment. But unfortunately, six months later, Kuboyama Aji, the oldest person in charge of communication on board, died at the age of 40.
It was reported afterwards that the United States secretly conducted the largest hydrogen bomb explosion test in history on bikini atoll. According to scientists’ analysis, the destructive power of this hydrogen bomb is no less than the atomic bomb dropped by the United States in Hiroshima that year, and it is conservatively estimated that the power is at least 1000 times higher. The test caused nuclear pollution, and the crew on the No.5 Fulong Pill was one of the victims. This incident is called "bikini incident" in Japan.
In August 1945, after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the Soviet Union began to accelerate the development of atomic bombs. In 1949, the first atomic bomb of the Soviet Union was successfully tested. The news spread to the United States, causing shock and anxiety in the United States. The military hegemony of the United States was challenged, so the United States began to develop a more powerful nuclear weapon-the hydrogen bomb, and a series of nuclear tests were necessary to develop this terrible weapon. In January 1946, after repeated deliberation and investigation, the US Atomic Energy Commission finally selected the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean as a new atomic bomb testing ground. The Marshall Islands has become an innocent victim of these nuclear tests.
The Marshall Islands is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a land area of 181 square kilometers. It consists of more than 1,200 Okojima reefs, which are distributed in the sea area of more than 2 million square kilometers. In February 1946, the United States forced the local residents to move, and American engineers entered bikini atoll and conducted a hateful hydrogen bomb test. Although the Marshallese did not want to leave their ancestral homes, they had to move to another island 200 kilometers away in tears under the threat of American naval guns and tanks. What is even more vicious is that the US military did not tell the residents the reasons for the relocation and the possible harm caused by the nuclear test, which ultimately made the local residents pay a heavy price.
In the early morning of November 1, 1952, the world’s first hydrogen bomb "Mike" was detonated here. In an instant, nuclear radiation, shock wave, and optical radiation 500 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima … brazenly flaunted over the Pacific Ocean. Researchers who observed the explosion of hydrogen bombs 60 kilometers away humorously described that the world’s first man-made thermonuclear sun rose.
The success of the test explosion of the hydrogen bomb has enabled the United States to regain its dominant position in the field of nuclear weapons, and its mind has been a little down-to-earth, thinking that it can rest easy and sleep comfortably. But they forget that a sly rabbit should have three caves, and only one is not enough. In August 1953, the first hydrogen bomb in the Soviet Union was successfully tested, which deeply hurt the United States, so the United States decided to explode a more powerful hydrogen bomb, and the real nightmare of the Marshallese came.
The two countries are fighting like two children. On March 1, 1954, the United States placed a hydrogen bomb predicted to be 6 million tons of TNT equivalent in Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. At about 6: 45, the hydrogen bomb exploded about two meters above the ground. The explosion scene quickly dumbfounded the observers: this can never be an explosion equivalent of 6 million tons! Because they found that the island where the hydrogen bomb was located and two nearby islands disappeared from sight at the moment of explosion. The U.S. air observation plane found that the place where the hydrogen bomb was originally placed suddenly became a deep lake. The Great Lakes are nearly 2 kilometers wide and 80 meters deep. People can clearly see the light on the island 220 kilometers away from the explosion center.
Due to the failure to estimate the explosive power, the U.S. military failed to inform nearby residents and fishing boats of various countries operating at sea to evacuate in advance, which caused the biggest nuclear pollution incident in the Pacific Ocean.
(Reader Sun Guangxing is excerpted from The 5000-year Disaster Record of the World I Must Know, published by Wuhan Publishing House, priced at 28.00 yuan)