“On
April 26, 1986, a reactor at the plant, in the then Soviet Union,
exploded and caught fire after a safety test went badly wrong. The
blast sent radiation billowing across Europe.
At first,
authorities denied there was a problem. But tens of thousands of
inhabitants were evacuated from Prypyat, the town closest to the
site, never to return. A 30 km exclusion zone is still in place
around the town.
Local
firefighters and other emergency workers went straight to the scene
and in the ensuing days and weeks sought to bring the situation under
control. Exposed to high levels of radiation, few of them are alive
today.
At least
30 people were killed immediately but some put the eventual death
toll from radiation exposure at tens or even hundreds of thousands.”
... and
other nuclear accidents that remained secret for years:
“America’s
worst accident at a civilian nuclear power plant occurred on March
28, 1979. Unbeknown to anyone, half the fuel melted in one of two
nuclear reactors on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa. Large
quantities of radioactivity leaked from the reactor, but most of it
was contained. In all probability, no one received a harmful amount
of radiation. The enormous damage to the reactor was revealed only
years later when TV cameras and a specially developed ultrasonic,
sonar-like imaging system looked inside the reactor vessel.”
Meanwhile,
the huge problem of treating efficiently and safely radioactive
wastes remains unsolved.
Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and who knows how many others were
covered by governments. Where will it end?
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