HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

There was a and fire in an atomic pile at Leipzig shortly after Werner Heisenberg and Robert Döpel had used it to generate Nazi Germany’s 1st signals of propagation. While checking their device for a possible heavy- leak, air June 23, 1942 got in and the device’s powder ignited. This caused the water jacket to boil and generated enough steam pressure to blow the pile apart, scattering burning ura- nium powder throughout the lab.

There was an unexpected criticality nuclear reaction at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, which is the February 11, 1945 next stage after criticality in the generation of a bomb-like nuclear detonation. This was the 1st time in the history of the US’s nuclear program that such a supremely dan- gerous -like event had occurred in the laboratory.

At the Omega site in Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, Harry K. Dagh- lian, Jr. inadvertently creating a critical mass when he dropped a tungsten carbide August 21, 1945 brick onto a core. Although he quickly removed the brick he had been fatally irradiated, and would die on September 15th.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico there was another accidental criti- cality. Demonstrating his technique for the benefit of 7 visitors, Louis Slotin used a screwdriver to manually assemble a critical mass of plutonium. His hand slipped. May 21, 1946 He received an estimated dose of 1,000 rads (rad), or 10 grays (Gy) and would die on May 30th. The observers received doses as high as 166 rads but survived, although 3 of them would die within a few decades from conditions presumed to be radiation- related.

For the 2d time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific December 1949 Laboratory, some went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before a nuclear blast.

A B-36 was flying a simulated combat mission in a test of its ability to carry nuclear payloads, off the coast of British Columbia over the Pacific Ocean, from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska to Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas, carrying a weapon that had a dummy warhead. The device contained conventional explosives and natural uranium but lacked the plutonium needed to create a . They experienced mechanical problems and were forced to shut down 3 of February 13, 1950 6 engines of the bomber at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Fearing that severe weather and icing would jeopardize an emergency landing, and aware the TNT might explode, they jettisoned the device over the Pacific Ocean at a height of 8,000 feet. The device’s high explosives detonated upon impact with a bright flash. All 16 crew mem- bers and a passenger parachuted and 12 would be subsequently recovered from Prin- cess Royal Island. The Pentagon’s summary report neglects to mention whether any of the natural uranium was later recovered.

At Albuquerque, New Mexico, 3 minutes after departure from Kirtland Air Force Base, a B-29 bomber carrying a nuclear device and 4 spare detonators crashed into a mountain near Manzano Base. An atomic explosion was not likely because, for safety April 11, 1950 reasons, the weapon’s core was outside the weapon. The crash resulted in a fire visi- ble from 15 miles and all 13 crewmen were killed. The device’s high explosives ignited upon contact with the plane’s burning fuel. The 4 spare detonators and all nuclear materials would be recovered. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

A B-50 aircraft on a training mission from Biggs Air Force Base with a nuclear July 13, 1950 weapon aboard flew into the ground at Lebanon, Ohio. High explosives scattered nuclear materials but there was no nuclear explosion.

At Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California there was the non-nuclear detonation when a B-29 bomber with a Mark 4 atomic bomb on board, heading for Guam, expe- August 5, 1950 rienced malfunctions with 2 props and with landing gear retraction during takeoff and crashed while circling back. In the crash the bomb’s high explosives killed 19 includ- ing the pilot, Brigadier-General Robert F. Travis.

At Rivière-du-Loup, Québec, an atomic bomb into which the plutonium core had not been inserted detonated in a non-nuclear manner. A B-50 was bringing back one of several Mark 4 nuclear bombs that we had secretly deployed in Canada, when it had November 10, 1950 engine trouble and jettisoned the device at 10,500 feet above the St. Lawrence River. The crew set the device to self-destruct at 2,500 feet. The explosion shook area resi- dents and scattered nearly 100 pounds of Uranium-238 that had been in the weapon’s tamper.

For the 3d time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific February 1, 1951 Laboratory, some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

For the 4th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific April 18, 1952 Laboratory, some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

For the 5th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific June 2, 1952 Laboratory, some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

Technicians mistakenly pulled 4 of the 12 control rods out of the fuel core of the experimental NRX (NRX = “National Research Experimental”) at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories, northwest of Ottawa. There December 12, 1952 was a power surge, partial loss of , and partial core meltdown, followed by an explosion, in which the core was rendered unusable and 4,000,000 liters of radioac- tive water flooded the building’s basement.

At in the Marshall Islands during the Castle Bravo test of the 1st deploy- able hydrogen bomb, the explosion was more than twice as large as anticipated. Of the total yield equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT, 10 megatons were from fission of the natural uranium tamper and these fission reactions produced a great deal of dirty- March 1, 1954 bomb fallout. Due to an unanticipated wind shift, the radioactive fallout spread into unexpected areas. A 23-man Japanese fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryu Maru or Lucky Dragon, was dosed and many crewmen developed radiation sickness, with a fatality. The fallout spread eastward onto the inhabited Rongelap and Rongerik Atolls, which had not been evacuated, and many Marshall Islanders have suffered radiation burns.

For the 6th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Oak Ridge National Lab- May 26, 1954 oratory some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

Operator error caused a partial core meltdown in an experimental EBR-I breeder reac- November 29, 1955 tor in Idaho. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

For the 7th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Oak Ridge National Lab- February 1, 1956 oratory some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

A B-47 Stratojet on a non-stop mission from MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to an overseas base while carrying 2 cores descended into a cloud forma- March 10, 1956 tion at 14,000 feet over the Mediterranean Sea for in-air refueling, and disappeared. Neither wreckage nor the cores have been located.

For the 8th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific July 3, 1956 Laboratory some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

At RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, a B-47 crashed into a storage igloo and July 27, 1956 burning fuel covered 3 Mark-6 nuclear weapons.

During the Suez Crisis NORAD received worrisome simultaneous reports of uniden- tified aircraft over Turkey, Soviet MiG-21s over Syria, a downed British bomber, and unexpected maneuvers by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles, that might be taken to indicate an offensive by the Soviet Union. The US military com- November 5, 1956 mand worried that our nuclear-armed allies might overreact and make a NATO strike on the USSR. These reports would be resolved as coincidences such as a wedge of swans over Turkey, fighter planes escorting the Syrian president, a British bomber with mechanical issues, and routine scheduled exercises of the Soviet fleet.

Accidental venting of extraction wastes by a Soviet Plutonium factory near Kyshtym, 1957 forced a 20-year evacuation of nearly 500 square miles of Western Siberia.

For the 9th time in the history of our nuclear program, at the Los Alamos Scientific February 12, 1957 Laboratory some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

In the vicinity of the “Windscale” facility radioactivity release contaminated about Spring 1957 800 farms. Milk contaminated with Strontium-90 was sold to the public without any warnings.

When a B-36 ferrying a nuclear weapon from Biggs Air Force Base dropped it while landing at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, it struck the ground 4.5 miles south of the May 22, 1957 Kirtland control tower and 0.3 miles west of the Sandia Base reservation and its high explosive material made a crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet in diameter. Radiation at the crater lip measured 0.5 milliroentgen.

A C-124 out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware with 3 nuclear bombs lost power July 28, 1957 over the Atlantic Ocean. The crew jettisoned 2 of the bombs, which have not been recovered. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

A fire in a glovebox for radioactive materials inside the plutonium-processing build- ing at Rocky Flats Plant in Golden, Colorado ignited the box’s rubber gloves and plexiglas windows and spread to the plutonium. The fire spread through the ventila- tion system and plumes of radioactive smoke rose into the atmosphere. The fire raged for 13 hours that night. Department of Energy officials and the Dow Chemical offi- September 11, 1957 cials who ran the facility would conceal the extent of the radiation hazard from local officials and the media for years. Plutonium would be detected near a school 12 miles away, and in the vicinity of Denver 17 miles away. Plutonium contamination in Rocky Flats would measure 400 to 1,500 times higher than background radiation — higher than anything ever recorded in any urban area such as Nagasaki, Japan.

At Mayak, a reprocessing plant in Kyshtim, Russia, there was a radiation September 29, 1957 contamination incident.

The “Windscale” fire in the British atomic bomb project at , Cumberland destroyed the reactor core and released Iodine-131 into the environment and injected October 10, 1957 Strontium-90 into the domestic milk supply. Fortunately, they had fabricated a rudi- mentary smoke filter over the main outlet chimney, which forestalled a far worse out- come.

The fire was still burning at the “Windscale” plant that produced plutonium for Brit- October 11, 1957 ish A-bombs when, at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, a wheel exploded while a B-47 was taking off and the resulting fire consumed one of the US’s A-bombs.

For the 10th time in the history of our nuclear program, this time at the Mayak Pro- duction Association, some fissile material went beyond criticality into prompt-criti- cality, the final stage before an atomic explosion. Not to worry, however, for in the more than half century of our nuclear era there have been only a couple of dozen such incidents, that we know of. We are told that a full A-bomb nuclear-weapon-like blast is a real engineering success story and very difficult to create, and therefore it is really really unlikely that any such prompt-criticality incident will ever produce a full A- bomb nuclear weapon-like blast without our really having intended for that to happen January 2, 1958 (even at Chernobyl the molten “” stuff in the “Elephant’s Foot” formation in the basement failed to go off like a bomb). Just about the worst thing that might hap- pen in a prompt-criticality situation is that the in question goes off like what one might term a big “dirty” bomb –which is not at all in the same ballpark in terms of blast-effect although it is in the same ballpark in terms of contamination- effect– except that we must bear in mind that at the Fukushima Daiichi site, unfortu- nately, there are some 2,000 tons of such materials available within a few thousands of yards, in the 6 reactor cores and 7 cooling pools.

A B-47 with an armed Mark 36 hydrogen bomb aboard was making a simulated take- off in Morocco when a wheel casting broke and the plane’s tail struck the runway. A fuel tank ruptured and fire damaged the H-bomb. Contamination was detected January 31, 1958 immediately. Our military reassured King Mohammed V, as to what had, just about, almost, happened in his nation and, having no real choice, he was able to take this in stride. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

Out of Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, in a mid-air collision, we lost a Mark 15 Mod 0 nuclear bomb. The B-47 bomber carrying it during a simulated combat mis- sion collided in midair with a F-86 Sabre. The F-86’s pilot ejected and parachuted to February 5, 1958 safety. The B-47 failed 3 times to land at Hunter Air Force Base near Savannah, Geor- gia and then jettisoned the device at 7,200 feet above Tybee Island in the Atlantic Ocean. The bomber was then able to land. A 3-square-mile area near Wassaw Sound would be searched for 9 weeks before the fruitless search would be abandoned.

During Operation Snow Flurry, a top-secret mission to simulate a nuclear attack, a B- 47E bomber was in a formation of 4 B-47s flying from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia to England. The flight navigator/bombardier, checking the locking harness on the 7,600-pound Mark 6 plutonium bomb, inadvertently grabbed an emer- gency manual release lever. The bomb smashed open the bomb-bay doors and went into a 15,000-foot free fall. No nuclear detonation was possible because, for safety March 11, 1958 and security reasons, the weapon’s core had not been placed inside the weapon. When it struck the ground 6.5 miles east of Florence, South Carolina, in Mars Bluff, its high-explosive detonator went off and produced a 30-foot deep crater 70 feet wide, destroying a nearby house and chicken coop and injuring 6 civilians and quite a few chickens. The US Air Force would lie wholeheartedly, asserting reassuringly that this was the 1st time such an event had ever occurred.

There was an uranium-processing-related criticality at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Unknowingly, during a routine leak test, a fissile solution was draining into a 55-gallon drum! No, no, not the assembly of a critical mass! –What were they thinking? –Were they thinking? The excursion went on for about 20 minutes and 8 people were affected, fortunately none of them mortally — 5 would be in the hospital for 44 days but eventually all 8 would be back on the job keeping our nation safe for May 24, 1958 democracy. Meanwhile, in Ontario, Canada, in the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River Laboratories, a damaged uranium fuel rod caught fire and tore apart as it was removed from the core. Radioactive combustion products contaminated the inte- rior of the reactor building and an area of the surrounding site. Clean-up and repair would require 3 months.

There was a 2d accident at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories, one considerably more serious than the partial core meltdown of an experimental NRX reactor that had occurred there in 1952. A damaged uranium fuel rod being pulled from the core caught fire and came apart. Radioactive combustion products would need to be cleaned from the interior of the reactor building and surrounding laboratory site (some members of the military contingent assigned to perform this June 16, 1958 cleanup would apply for disability pensions due to long term health impact, but find that they were unable to prove their case). Meanwhile on this day, in the C-1 wing of building 9212 at the Y-12 complex of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, workers were allowing a quantity of highly enriched uranyl nitrate to accumulate in the bottom of a drum, and eventually this resulted in a prompt neutron criticality that produced a burst of an estimated 1.3 × 1018 fissions. 8 employees in close proximity received doses ranging from 30 to 477 rems. No fatalities would be reported.

A B-47 bomber developed a fire shortly after take-off from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas and plunged with its nuclear weapon from an altitude of 1,500 feet. The detona- November 4, 1958 tion of the high explosive material in the weapon created a crater 6 feet deep and 35 feet wide. 3 crew members escaped and 1 was killed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

When a B-47 bomber with a nuclear weapon on board caught on fire on the ground at November 26, 1958 Chennault Air Force Base, Louisiana, a limited explosion of non-nuclear material caused contamination of the site and wreckage.

During chemical purification a critical mass accumulated in a plutonium solution being stirred at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This was the 3d time this year that fissile material had gone beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, December 30, 1958 the final stage before an atomic explosion. Chemical operator Cecil E. Kelley would succumb to acute radiation sickness after 35 hours of anguish. Subsequent to this, as a matter of policy in US federal facilities, no more such hand manipulation of critical assemblies would be tolerated. Enough is enough.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean region, they won’t say where, a parked F-100C Super Sabre with a nuclear weapon caught on fire and exploded after a practice alert January 18, 1959 in which it dropped its external fuel tanks. The fire was put out in 7 minutes with no nuclear detonation.

When a C-124 transporting 2 nuclear weapons without fissile cores crashed and July 6, 1959 burned down during take-off at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, the high- explosive detonators of the weapons did not go off and contamination was limited.

There was a partial core meltdown, “the worst in US history,” at Area IV of the Santa July 12, 1959 Susana Field Laboratory’s reactor experiment in Simi Valley, California.

A P5M antisubmarine aircraft carrying an unarmed nuclear depth charge crashed in September 25, 1959 Puget Sound near Whidbey Island in the State of Washington. The device would not be recovered.

Planes from Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, a B-52F-100-BO with 2 nukes and a KC-135 refueling aircraft, collided at 32,000 feet while transferring fuel above October 15, 1959 Hardinsburg, Kentucky. The crash killed 8 crewmembers. An unarmed nuclear weapon was damaged, but without contamination.

There was a chemical explosion during decontamination of processing machinery in November 20, 1959 the radiochemical processing plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that released a little more than half an ounce of 239Pu.

When a tank exploded at McGuire Air Force Base near New Egypt, New Jer- June 7, 1960 sey, the fuel tanks of a BOMARC-A surface-to-air missile were ruptured. The missile and its nuclear warhead were destroyed and the immediate vicinity was contaminated.

The warning system at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s NORAD tracking center inside Cheyenne Mountain was put on high alert by the Ballistic Mis- sile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase in Greenland because it misinterpreted the rising moon and indicated that with a probability of 99.9% the United States was October 5, 1960 under massive attack by Soviet nuclear warheads out of Siberia (since Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Krushchev was at the moment at the in New York City, in the minds of the humans involved the warning did not seem at all likely).

On the Soviet Northern Fleet November-class submarine K-8 in the Barents Sea of the Arctic there was a leak in the steam generators and in a pipe leading to the com- October 13, 1960 pensator reception. The crew improvised a cooling system but there was leakage of radioactive and some men were exposed to doses of up to 180–200 rem. On 3 of these men there was visible radiation damage. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

There was an explosion at the SL-1 prototype at the National Reactor Testing Station January 3, 1961 in Idaho Falls, Idaho that killed all 3 operators (they had been withdrawing a control rod and pulled it out a bit too far).

A B-52 bomber with 2 Mark-39 hydrogen bombs developed a leak in a wing fuel cell and exploded in midair 12 miles north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Of its crewmen, 2 died in the aircraft and 6 managed to parachute but 1 died in his parachute landing. One H-bomb disintegrated as it plunged into a muddy field at around 700 mph. Its tail came to rest about 20 feet down and much of it, such as its tritium bottle and its plutonium, would be recoverable. Due to ground water flooding, most of the uranium of its thermonuclear stage would need to be left on site some 55 feet beneath the surface. The Air Force would purchase the field, near Goldsboro, North Carolina, January 24, 1961 and fence it off for security, and it is being tested regularly for contamination although so far there has been none. On the other of the H-bombs, its 100-foot-diameter retar- dation parachute deployed and it impacted with little damage. On this truly huge weapon, 3 of its 4 arming devices activated and it completed many of the steps to arm itself such as the charging of its firing capacitors. Its 4th and final arming device did not activate — the pilot’s safe/arm switch, a commercially available inexpensive switch (had it detonated, presumably we would have needed to evacuate both Wash- ington DC and Philadelphia).

For the 2d time this month, this time at the Chemical Processing Plant, National Reactor Testing Station, Idaho, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criti- cality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion. At approxi- mately 9:47AM a critical mass of uranium-235 accumulated in the H-cell evaporator January 25, 1961 H-UC vapor disengaging head, Prompt gamma radiation set off radiation alarms and, subsequently, radioactive was released from the plant stack into the atmosphere. This incident had occurred merely 5 days after operations had been resumed follow- ing almost a year of safety shutdown.

When a B-52 bomber took off with 2 nuclear bombs from Mather Air Force Base, California it experienced a decompression event that would not allow it to rise above March 14, 1961 10,000 feet. Due to increased fuel consumption at lower altitude, it ran out of fuel and crashed near Yuba City, California. Its bombs didn’t go off.

Off the coast of Norway, when the cooling system of Soviet Hotel-class submarine K- July 4, 1961 19 failed, reactor core temperatures reached 1,500 °F and its fuel rods nearly melted. Some of its ballistic missiles were contaminated and there were several fatalities.

Staff at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SAC HQ) simultaneously lost con- tact with NORAD and multiple Ballistic Missile Early Warning System sites. Since these communication lines had been understood to be redundant and independent from one another, the communications failure was interpreted as either a very November 24, 1961 unlikely coincidence or a coordinated attack. SAC HQ had the entire ready force pre- pared for takeoff before aircraft already aloft confirmed that there did not appear to be any attack. It was later found that the failure of a single relay station in Colorado in this supposedly redundant and independent system had been the sole cause of the problem.

When the 2d French underground nuclear test, codenamed “Béryl,” was detonated in a shaft under Mount Taourirt near In Ecker north of Tamanrasset in the Algerian May 1, 1962 Sahara, a spectacular flare burst out of the concrete cap and a plume of radioactive gases and dust rose to 8,500 feet. About 100 soldiers including 2 government minis- ters were irradiated; the number of contaminated Algerians is of course unknown. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

During a contractor checkout, a Titan I ICBM exploded in its silo near Chico, Califor- May 22, 1962 nia. The contractors and the crew of the silo were unharmed.

Soviet patrol diesel submarine B-59 almost launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo while under harassment by American naval forces. One of several vessels surrounded by American destroyers near Cuba, the sub had dived to avoid detection and been out of touch with Moscow for days. When the USS Beale dropped practice depth charges to signal the B-59 to surface, the Soviet commander considered that war had begun. The commander of the B-59 had a 10-Kiloton nuclear torpedo to use against an American aircraft carrier within range, the USS Randolph. The submarine political officer October 27, 1962 agreed but as low batteries affected the submarine’s life support systems, commander of the sub-flotilla Vasili Arkhipov voted “Nyet” and forced them to surface and radio for orders. On the same day an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba while a U-2 flown by US Air Force Captain Charles Maultsby strayed by navigational error 300 miles over the Chukotka Peninsula, causing Soviet MIGs to scramble and pursue. American F-102As escorted the U-2 into friendly airspace. These interceptors were armed with GAR-11 Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles (each having a 0.25 kilo- ton yield) which their pilots were authorized to arm and launch.

For the 15th time in the history of our nuclear program, this time at the Los Alamos December 11, 1962 Scientific Laboratory, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

For the 15th time in the history of our nuclear program, this time at the Sarov March 11, 1963 (Arzamas-16) facility, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

About 190 nautical miles (220 land miles) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, our nuclear submarine USS Thresher was in serious trouble due to improper welds that were allowing in seawater that was forcing a shutdown of its reactor. Poor design of April 10, 1963 its emergency blow system would prevent the ship from surfacing and the disabled ship would ultimately descend to its crush depth and implode, killing all 129 mem- bers of its crew. When the vessel would be raised, it would be discovered that some of its valves had been installed backward.

A B-52 disintegrated in a severe winter storm while on airborne alert above Salisbury, Pennsylvania. A crewman failed to bail out and other crewmembers succumbed to January 13, 1964 injuries or exposure to the harsh winter. Only the 2 pilots survived. The plane’s ther- monuclear bombs would be recovered from wreckage at a farm northwest of Frost- burg, Maryland.

At the Wood River Junction facility in Charlestown, Rhode Island, a plant for recov- ery of uranium from scrap material left over from fuel element production, a worker accidentally dropped a concentrated uranium solution into an agitated tank containing sodium carbonate and there was a criticality. The operator received a fatal dose of July 23, 1964 some 10,000 rad (100 Gy). Ninety minutes later a plant manager returned to the build- ing and attempted to turn off the agitator, but this caused another smaller criticality from which he and another administrator received doses of up to 100 rad (without immediate ill effect).

A B-58 aircraft with a nuclear weapon caught fire while taxiing at Bunker Hill Air December 8, 1964 Force Base in Indiana. Its nuke burned and the crash area was contaminated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

Although an accident at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory occasioned the January 1965 release of 300 kCi of tritium, subsequent evaluations assured us that such exposure was unlikely to have a health impact on surrounding communities.

There was a loss-of-coolant accident on the Lenin, a Soviet nuclear icebreaker: while shut down for refueling they removed the coolant from its number 2 reactor before they removed its spent fuel. This caused some of the fuel elements to melt and deform February 1965 inside the reactor. 124 fuel assemblies (about 60% of the total) got stuck inside the reactor core. They decided to remove the fuel, control grid, and control rods as a unit and dispose of it; this unit would be placed in a special cask, solidified, stored for 2 years, and then in 1967 dumped into Tsivolki Bay in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

At the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, some fissile material unexpect- May 28, 1965 edly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

A fire at the plutonium-processing Rocky Flats Plant in Golden, Colorado exposed a October 11, 1965 crew of 25 to up to 17 times the legal limit for radiation.

When there was a massive power outage in the northeastern United States, several nuclear bomb detectors near major US cities –circuits intended to distinguish between November 9, 1965 regular power outages and power outages caused by a nuclear attack– malfunctioned due to circuit errors. They warned the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning of an attack and the office went to full alert.

An A-4E Skyhawk with its B43 nuclear bomb fell off our aircraft carrier USS Ticond- eroga while the ship was underway from Vietnam to Yokosuka, Japan. Plane, pilot, December 5, 1965 and nuke came to rest at a depth of 16,200 feet somewhere (it is presumably best that nobody find out exactly where this happened).

During over-ocean in-flight refueling, a B-52 out of an air base in North Carolina with 4 unarmed B28RI H-bombs collided with its KC-135 tanker. 7 of the airmen were killed while 4 parachuted to safety. A bomb landed intact near Palomares while the conventional explosives in 2 of the bombs detonated upon impact, in effect creating “dirty bombs” contaminating nearby tomato farms with plutonium from the A-bomb triggers that are at the core of all H-bombs. The 4th bomb plunged into the Mediterra- nean 12 miles offshore. A 3-month search involving 12,000 men and the deep-diving January 17, 1966 research submarine DSV Alvin successfully recovered that 4th bomb. Cleanup has involved storing 1,700 short tons of radioactive soil and tomato plants at a nuclear dump near the Savannah River plant in Aiken, South Carolina. The US settled claims by 522 Palomares residents for $600,000. The town also received a $200,000 desalinization plant. It would not be until 1985 that the locals would be granted access to their own medical records. As of 2008, Spanish authorities were still finding spots of radioactivity and conducting additional radwaste removal operations (as of 2010 the treaties that required the US to pay for such cleanups expired).

The Fermi 1 Reactor at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Frenchtown October 5, 1966 Charter Township in Michigan suffered a partial core meltdown but radiation did not leak. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

Shortly after refueling, the Soviet nuclear icebreaker Lenin’s cooling system started to leak. They sledgehammered their way through its concrete and metal biological 1967 shield but then, with the leak fixed, they couldn’t repair this sledgehammer damage: all 3 of the vessel’s reactors would need to be removed, and replaced with 2 OK-900 reactors. This would take them until early 1970.

At the Chapelcross nuclear power station in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland there was a partial meltdown because graphite debris had partly blocked a fuel channel, May 1967 causing a fuel element to melt and catch fire. This contamination was confined to the reactor core (the core would be repaired and restarted in 1969, and would operate until the plant’s shutdown in 2004).

When a powerful solar flare accompanied by coronal mass ejection interfered with multiple NORAD radars over the Northern Hemisphere, this was taken to be inten- May 23, 1967 tional jamming of the radars by the Soviets, accompanying an attack on the USA. We came uncomfortably close to launching nuclear bombers for a counter-strike.

A fire broke out in the navigator’s compartment of a B-52. The bomber crashed 7 miles from Thule Air Base, Greenland, rupturing its nuclear payload of 4 H-bombs. Bomb fragments would be recycled at Pantex in Amarillo, Texas. Contaminated ice January 21, 1968 and debris would be buried somewhere in the United States of America, perhaps out- side of Aiken, South Carolina. The incident, for which we were sorry, outraged our ally Denmark, as Greenland is theirs and they had explicitly forbidden any nuclear weapons within their territory.

For the 18th time in the history of our nuclear program, this time at the Oak Ridge January 30, 1968 National Laboratory, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

For the 19th time in the history of the nuclear agenda and the 2d time this year, this time at the Chelyabinsk-70 secret town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, some fis- April 5, 1968 sile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

The USS Scorpion sank 400 nautical miles southwest of the Azores while en route from Rota, Spain, to Norfolk, Virginia. We don’t know why this happened, as all 99 May 22, 1968 officers and men perished. The wreckage, its S5W nuclear reactor, and its 2 Mark 45 torpedoes with W34 nuclear warheads, remain safely on the sea floor in more than 9,800 feet of water, to be dealt with someday.

During sea trials the Soviet nuclear submarine K-27 had a problem with reactor cool- ing. After spending some time at reduced power, reactor output inexplicably dropped while sensors detected an increase of gamma radiation in the reactor compartment. May 24, 1968 The safety buffer tank released radioactive gases, further contaminating the subma- rine. The crew shut the reactor down and subsequent investigation found that approx- imately 20% of its fuel assemblies had been damaged. In 1981 the entire resulting mess would be scuttled in the Kara Sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

While the USSR’s Yankee-class nuclear submarine K-140 was in the naval yards at Severodvinsk being repaired, the power output of its reactor began to rise uncontrol- lably and unexplainably. When workers raised control rods to a higher position the August 27, 1968 reactor activated automatically and power increased to 18 times normal, while pres- sure and temperature increased to 4 times normal. Aboard the vessel, radiation levels increased (the problem would turn out to have been incorrect installation of control rod electrical cables).

For the 20th time in the history of the nuclear agenda and the 3d time this year, September 30, 1968 this time at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

For the 21st and 22d times in the history of the nuclear agenda (and the 4th and 5th times this year), on these occasions at the Mayak Production Association in Russia, December 10, 1968 a nuclear fuel processing complex, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

The reactor in Vaud, had a partial core meltdown due to loss of January 21, 1969 coolant, and its cavern was made so highly radioactive that it would need to be sealed.

Inside a glovebox at the Rocky Flats Plant in Golden, Colorado 5 kilograms of pluto- May 11, 1969 nium caught on fire. Cleanup would take 2 years, and this was to become the costliest US industrial accident of all time.

At the nuclear site at Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux, France, 50 kilos of uranium dioxide October 17, 1969 melted inside reactor A1 during a refueling operation.

With its nuclear reactors shut down and simultaneous fires in 2 compartments, the 52- man crew of the Soviet November-class attack submarine K-8 attempted to hook a April 12, 1970 tow line to an East Bloc merchant vessel. This failed, and they went under in the Bay of Biscay.

To reduce further , in 1963 we subscribed to a Partial Nuclear Test Ban preventing further above-ground tests, although we were of course aware that in future below-ground tests of new nuclear weapons, there might continue to be some venting, This “Baneberry” underground 10-kiloton test under Area 8 on Yucca Flat at the Nevada Test Site, part of Operation Emery, would result however in extensive off- site fallout. The device was detonated at the bottom of a 900-foot vertical shaft that had been carefully sealed, but the device’s energy caused a fissure near that for many hours vented a plume of hot gases and radioactive dust. 6% of the explosion’s radioactive products were vented, releasing 6.7 MCi of radioactive mate- rial including 80 kCi of Iodine-131 and a high ratio of noble gases. The hot cloud’s December 18, 1970 lighter particles were carried to 3 altitudes and conveyed by winter storms and the jet stream to be deposited heavily as -laden snow in the Lassen and Sierra regions of northeast California, and to a lesser extent in northern Nevada, southern Idaho, and some eastern sections of Oregon and Washington. Diverging jet stream layers deposited on Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean. Although TIME Magazine would sensationally characterize this Baneberry Test as one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, and some 86 workers at the Nevada Test Site had been exposed to radioactivity, the government alleged that no-one received a dose exceeding site guidelines. Similarly, the Department of Energy would not consider the radiation being distributed offsite to constitute any sort of hazard. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

For the 23d time in the history of the nuclear agenda, this time at the Kirchatov Insti- February 15, 1971 tute in Russia, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond criticality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

During a transfer of radioactive coolant water from the USS Dace to the submarine December 12, 1971 tender USS Fulton, some 500 gallons got spilled into the Thames River of New Lon- don, Connecticut.

In Pawling, New York, a major fire and 2 explosions contaminated a plutonium fabri- December 1972 cation facility, causing its permanent shutdown.

At Sosnovyi Bor, Leningrad Oblast, Russia there was, apparently, a partial nuclear 1975 meltdown in reactor unit 1.

January 8, 1975 A nuclear power plant at Mihama, Japan released radioactivity.

At Browns Ferry there were 3 control rooms and 3 reactors, leading to an appearance March 22, 1975 of elaborate redundancy, but all the control cables ran through the same tunnel — in which a fire was created by a worker using a candle to search out air leaks. Yeah.

Disabled submarine tender USS Proteus spilled radioactive coolant water into Apra October 1975 Harbor on Guam Island to the extent that at 2 of the harbor’s public beaches a Geiger counter indicated 100 millirems/hour (50 times as much as the allowable dose).

At Greifswald, East Germany, an electrical error started a fire in the main trough, that December 7, 1975 destroyed control lines and 5 main coolant pumps.

During fuel replacement at Jaslovské Bohunice, , CO2 being used as a January 5, 1976 coolant expelled a fuel rod from the reactor into the reactor hall.

An explosion at the Plutonium Finishing Plant in Hanford, Washington blew out a quarter-inch-thick window of lead glass, showering worker Harold McCluskey with nitric acid and radioactive glass. The worker would be isolated for 5 months while ingesting an experimental drug to flush radioactivity — he had received the largest August 1976 dose of 241Am ever inhaled (500 times greater than the government occupational standard). By 1977 his radiation count would decline by about 80% and when a decade later he would die at the age of 75, the death would be recorded as having been due to natural causes.

Off Kamchatka, Soviet submarine K-171 accidentally released a nuclear warhead. 1977 After a search involving dozens of ships and aircraft the warhead was recovered.

At Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia, a corroding reactor released intense radioac- February 22, 1977 tivity (the plant would need to be total decommissioned). HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

At 11:53AM Greenwich Mean Time, a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, Kosmos 954, intended to track our nuclear submarines and powered by an onboard nuclear reactor, failed to separate from its booster rocket and disintegrated on reentry above Canada’s Great Slave Lake. 68 pounds of U235 were dispersed over a wide area. 50 chunks and approximately 4,000 smaller particles would be collected from January 24, 1978 smoking potholes in the tundra. Perhaps 75% of the radioactive material, or 51 pounds, had been vaporized. By recounting only the record for US rockets in its pub- lications and omitting what it knows about rockets from the USSR, NASA has man- aged not to take into consideration the long-term contamination, despite the fact that this accident has left 124,000 square kilometers of Canada’s surface contaminated with plutonium long-term. The USSR would pay CAD$3,000,000 for Canada’s help.

When the crew of the submarine USS Puffer mistakenly opened a valve, up to 500 May 22, 1978 gallons of irradiated water spilled into Puget Sound in the State of Washington.

For the 24th time in the history of the nuclear agenda, this time at the Idaho Chemical October 17, 1978 Processing Plant, some fissile material unexpectedly went critical and came very close to prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

In Whiteshell Reactor Number 1 at Pinawa, Manitoba, Canada there was a loss of November 1978 coolant accident in which the greatest part of 2,739 liters of leaking coolant oil found its way into the Winnipeg River. Repair would take several weeks.

Japan’s 1st happened at Fukushima Number 1, at that site’s Num- ber 3 reactor (this accident should be listed as the 25th such, but has not been assigned November 2, 1978 an ordinal number simply because it would be concealed for 29 years, and would ini- tially be confessed only on March 22d, 2007).

At Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, operator errors and a severe loss of coolant March 28, 1979 caused a core meltdown with release of radioactive gases.

April 2, 1979 At the Tokaimura complex in Japan, 2 workers were contaminated with radioactivity.

At France’s Saclay BL3 reactor, radioactive fluids were discharged into drains July 25, 1979 designed for ordinary wastes and seeped into the local watershed.

At Colorado’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) a computer- November 9, 1979 room monkey hung the wrong tape, a training program simulating a Soviet attack on the United States. Before the mistake was identified all hell almost broke out.

Inside the Saint Laurent A2 reactor at Loir-et-Cher in France, a malfunctioning cool- March 13, 1980 ing system caused fuel elements to fuse together. The fuel assembly being ruined, there would need to be an extended shutdown.

When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was March 15, 1980 detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the United States.

At Little Rock Air Force Base’s Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside north of Damas- cus, Arkansas, at about 6:30PM an airman dropped the socket off his socket wrench into a missile silo. The 9-pound piece of metal bounced down some 80 feet and struck the side of the Titan-II rocket’s 1st-stage hypergolic fuel tank, which sprang a leak. September 18/19, 1980 The area was evacuated. At about 3:00AM this detonated, killing an airman and destroying the complex. The rocket’s W53 nuclear warhead bounced about 100 feet outside the facility perimeter but its safety mechanism operated and there wasn’t any spread of radioactive material. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

While repairing a cracked pipe at a chronically deficient nuclear waste processing plant at Tsuruga west of Tokyo, any number of workers were exposed to excessive January 24-28, 1981 radiation (this was the 32d nuclear incident at Japan’s oldest commercial nuclear power plant, that had opened in 1970 on top of an active fault and would cease opera- tions for good on April 1st after yet another malfunction).

Nuclear reactor #1 at Tsuruga west of Tokyo released 16 tons of radioactive primary March 1981 cooling water. There would follow a 40-day cover-up that would be revealed only on April 1st when, after yet another malfunction, the facility would shut down for good.

When a nuclear power plant in Ontario, New York suffered a “severe failure” and January 25, 1982 released radioactive steam into the atmosphere, although workers in the plant were evacuated nearby residents were not.

The massive cooling and storage pool in Building #5 at the Andreev Bay depository northwest of Murmansk in the Soviet Union had been an accident waiting to happen. Steel drums each containing 5 to 7 spent fuel assemblies were hanging down into the water from massive chains, and were being kept away from each other to ensure that no uncontrolled would begin. In vari- ous accidents some 25 of these steel drums had fallen to the floor of the pool, and were just piled up down there. Radioactive steam was rising from the heated water. The pool was leaking and about 770,000 tons of highly radioactive water were wend- ing their way into the Barents Sea. The building was itself highly radioactive, and the roof leaked, and if a drop of water fell on a worker’s head, he would need to go through a lengthy decontamination process. During the extensive period of attempted February 1982 repairs by some 1,000 workers and subsequent dismantling of the pool other incidents would occur on site, including accidental accumulations of critical masses of material releasing radiation (ordinary shovels were being used to move spilled nuclear materi- als, and every once in awhile an accumulation of critical mass would cause the mate- rials to begin to glow from Cherenkov radiation and emit buzzing sounds). There would be blue-green flashes of light, uncontrolled chain reactions, as some of the nuclear waste drums were hoisted from where they lay on the floor of the pool. There was an “industrial accident” that caused a couple of cleanup workers to plunge directly into the radioactive pool. Highly irradiated, these workers received no medi- cal attention. The chronology of all these prompt-criticalities, the final stage before an atomic explosion, has not been recorded, but this would not be over until December 1989.

Soviet Project 705 Alfa-class hunter/killer nuclear-powered submarine K-123 was in the Barents Sea when there was a leak inside its reactor’s steam generator and the August 8, 1982 reactor began to emit its liquid lead-alloy coolant. Approximately a couple of tons of this liquid lead irreparably damaged the reactor compartment. Repair would require the following 9 years.

Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 1402 had been orbiting since August 30th, 1983 and had failed to boost its nuclear power core into a higher “parking orbit” before it burned February 7, 1983 up on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere on January 23d, 1983. On this day that remaining radioactive lump of 68 pounds of U235 plunged into the South Atlantic Ocean. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

At the Nuclear Generating Station in Pickering, Ontario, a site which, with 8 CANDU reactors 2 of which are now shut down and defueled, qualifies as one of the largest in August 1, 1983 the world, Nuclear Reactor #2 lost coolant due to the hydriding rupture of a pressure tube containing fuel bundles. Over the following decade the pressure tubes in active reactors at this site would need to be replaced with improved materials.

Several weeks after the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over Soviet airspace, a satellite early-warning system near Moscow reported the launch of an American Minuteman ICBM. Then it reported the launch of 4 more such missiles. Convinced September 26, 1983 that a real American attack would involve more missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Stan- islav Petrov of the Air Defense Forces insisted that this was a false alarm until ground radar confirmed that he was correct.

At the command center of the Bugey, France nuclear power plant a failure of electri- April 14, 1984 cal cables forced shutdown of one of the nuclear reactors.

At Athens, Alabama, safety violations, operator error, and design problems at Browns September 15, 1984 Ferry Unit 2 would eventuate in a 6-year shutdown.

During startup at the triple Browns Ferry plant in Athens, Alabama, problems arose March 9, 1985 that would cause suspension of operations at all 3 reactors.

In Chazhma Bay about 35 miles from Vladivostok, the reactor of Soviet Echo-class submarine K-431 was refueling when at 10:55AM it went prompt-critical. 10 crew- men were killed and 49 firefighters suffered radiation damage. TIME Magazine August 10, 1985 would sensationalize this as one of the world’s “worst nuclear disasters” despite the fact that the deadly cloud happened to blow toward the northwest and thus did not hurt the people of Vladivostok.

During a routine shutdown there was a fire at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, August 31, 1985 Japan.

When the US federal government belatedly declassified 19,000 pages of documents we discovered that between 1946 and 1986 the Hanford nuclear site had been leaking 1986 thousands of gallons of radioactive liquids. Many of the citizens living near Richland, Washington had been receiving doses of radiation iodine-131.

There was loss of coolant and Bruce Nuclear Reactor #2 shut down near Ontario, March 1986 Canada, when during a pressurizing test a pressure tube holding fuel bundles rup- tured.

At Boston Edison’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, recur- April 11, 1986 ring equipment problems forced an emergency shutdown.

At the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Chernobyl Raion (now Ivankiv Raion), Kiev Oblast, Ukraininan SSR, there was overheating, a steam explosion, fire, and a core April 26, 1986 meltdown, dispersing radioactive material across Europe and necessitating the perma- nent relocation of 300,000 local citizens.

At Hamm-Uentrop in West Germany, actions to dislodge damaged fuel elements at May 4, 1986 the experimental high-temperature reactor THTR-300 released small amounts of fission products into the surrounding area.

During pipe maintenance at a fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague in Normandy, May 21, 1986 France 3 welders and 2 plant workers were exposed to a radioactive liquid. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

In the process of inspecting a storeroom in Tokaimura, Japan, 12 people suffered June 23, 1986 some slight degree of plutonium contamination.

While sneaking along 480 miles east of Bermuda, the Soviet Yankee-I-class nuclear- powered submarine K-219 equipped with 16 SS-N-6 ballistic missiles (missiles which could loft in total approximately 34 nuclear warheads for detonation across the United States of America) experienced an explosion in missile tube #6 (what happened was that ocean water leaked through the missile hatch cover and in the missile tube reacted with residue from the missile’s liquid UDMH with IRFNA fuel, something that had already happened earlier in another of the missile tubes on this submarine). The submarine coped with this by opening the hatch and allowing the missile with its October 3, 1986 2 nuke warheads to slide out into the ocean. At least 3 of its crewmembers, however, were fatalities. What the Soviet Union would claim was that the leak had been caused by a collision with the United States Navy’s submarine USS Augusta, although this would be denied by the USA. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev secretly discussed the incident with President Ronald Reagan. On October 6th the submarine, the hull of which had been breached, while under tow, would sink to the bottom on the Hatteras Abyssal Plain of the Atlantic Ocean at 18,000 feet, taking along with it its remaining 32 nuclear warheads.

In Delta, Pennsylvania, Peach Bottom units 2 and 3 needed to be shut down due to March 31, 1987 cooling malfunctions and unexplained equipment problems.

At a fast in Tricastin, France, leaking coolant (sodium and uranium April 12, 1987 hexachloride) injured 7 workers and contaminated water supplies.

While refueling the fast breeder test reactor at Kalpakkam, India its core ruptured, May 4, 1987 necessitating a 2-year shutdown.

When a stop valve failed in the Biblis nuclear power plant at Hessen, Germany, December 17, 1987 the local area was contaminated.

At Lycoming, New York, Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation’s Nine Mile Point December 19, 1987 Unit 1 malfunctioned and was shut down.

At the nuclear trigger assembly facility at Rocky Flats in Colorado, 2 employees and a Department of Energy inspector inhaled radioactive particles — investigation of October 1988 this incident would uncover such a number of safety violations, including uncali- brated monitors, inadequate fire equipment, and groundwater contaminated with radioactivity, that the facility would be obliged to temporarily suspend operations.

At Lusby, Maryland, when Calvert Cliff Units 1 and 2 were inspected, cracks were March 17, 1989 discovered in their pressurized heater sleeves.

Operators at the Tarapur, Maharashtra, India atomic power station took notice of the September 10, 1989 fact that their reactor had been leaking radioactive iodine at more than 700 times nor- mal levels. Repairs would require more than a year.

They came close to a core meltdown in the nuclear power plant near Greifswald, Germany, where 3 out of its 6 cooling water pumps had been switched off for a test. November 24, 1989 When a 4th pump broke down they lost control, resulting in damage to 10 of the reactor’s fuel elements. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

When an emergency release valve failed, a nuclear power plant near Fukui, Japan February 8, 1991 released some radioactivity, although it would be reported that this “did not pose a threat to humans or the environment.”

The Mihama Nuclear Power Plant west of Tokyo, operated by Kansai Electric Power February 9, 1991 Company, released some radioactive water.

At the Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant in Leningrad Oblast near St. Petersburg, Russia, radioactive iodine escaped into the atmosphere through a ruptured fuel channel and March 24, 1992 the resulting cloud passed over northeastern Europe. Russian officials indicated that there was no cause for alarm.

At the atomic power station in Tarapur, Maharashtra, India, a malfunctioning tube May 13, 1992 released 12 curies of radioactivity.

At the Nuclear Generating Station in Pickering, Ontario, a site which, with 8 CANDU reactors 2 of which are now shut down and defueled, qualifies as one of the largest in August 2, 1992 the world, Nuclear Reactor #1 leaked 2,300 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium as heavy water into Lake Ontario, producing increased levels in the drinking water of Toronto, Canada.

At the nuclear facility in Fukushima, Japan, a worker was killed by high-pressure February 22, 1993 steam and 2 others injured.

At the Narora heavy water reactor near Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India a fire dam- March 31, 1993 aged a couple of its steam turbine blades, which almost resulted in a meltdown.

At the Nuclear Generating Station in Pickering, Ontario, a site which, with 8 CANDU reactors 2 of which are now shut down and defueled, qualifies as one of the largest in the world, there was yet another loss-of-coolant accident, in Reactor #2, one in which December 10, 1994 185 “tonnes” of heavy water spilled. The emergency core cooling system activated and there wasn’t a meltdown, but the Parliament’s Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources would during June 2001 declare this to have amounted to the most serious accident in Canadian history.

Norway launched a Black Brant XII research rocket to study the aurora borealis. Beforehand they had been careful to notify Russia and a number of other nations. However, Russian radar operators were not informed and, when they detected the January 25, 1995 launch, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made himself the 1st world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase. Russian strategic ballistic missile submarines were put on alert to prepare a possible retaliation but, as soon as it became clear there was no larger attack and that this rocket posed no threat, military forces were able to stand down.

Near Kota in India, the Rajasthan atomic power station leaked radioactive helium and February 2, 1995 heavy water into the Rana Pratap Sagar River, necessitating a 2-year shutdown for repairs.

The sodium-cooled, MOX-fueled loop-type fast breeder reactor Monju Nuclear December 1995 Power Plant near Tsuruga, Japan sprang a sodium leak that caused a major fire (the management would suppress videotape footage that showed extensive damage).

When a leaking valve forced shutdown of Waterford, Connecticut’s Millstone February 20, 1996 Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 and 2, multiple equipment failures were found.

A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Dounreay, Scotland was shut down when ele- September 1996 vated radiation levels were detected in waste-water it was discharging to the sea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

At Nuclear Unit 3 at Crystal River, Florida a balance-of-plant equipment malfunction September 2, 1996 forced shutdown. The power plant would require extensive repair.

Soldiers in Georgia, Russia were found to be suffering radiation poisoning and burns. These would eventually be traced back to training sources that had been abandoned, forgotten and unlabeled, upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union — one such source was a pellet of Caesium-137 unnoticed in a pocket of a shared jacket, which was found to be emitting radiation at about 130,000 times background levels to a distance 1997 of 1 meter (since this Caesium-137 has a half-life in excess of 30 years, it’s not to mess with). Leningrad worker Sergei Kharitonov displayed photographs of cracked walls and groundwater seepage at a nuclear power plant waste storage facility and attested that “for years” the plant has been dumping about 300 liters of contaminated water per year into the Gulf of Finland.

At least 35 workers were contaminated with minor radiation after a fire and explosion March 11, 1997 occurred at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Tokaimura, Japan. Radiation was dis- charged into the atmosphere.

For the 25th time in the history of the nuclear agenda, this time at the Sarov June 17, 1997 (Arzamas-16) facility in Russia, some fissile material unexpectedly went beyond crit- icality into prompt-criticality, the final stage before an atomic explosion.

April 1998 An RBMK reactor in Leningrad was shut down due to a radiation leak.

During an inspection at the nuclear power plant in Shika, Japan, the staff was tasked to perform an emergency control rod insertion on Unit 1. They were to insert a rod into the reactor. The procedure was performed improperly and instead of a rod being June 18, 1999 inserted, 3 were withdrawn. The reactor was critical for the following 15 minutes (this was the 26th criticality in the history of the nuclear agenda but was covered up in the records and would not be known until March 15, 2007).

At the Tokaimura uranium reprocessing facility in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, workers September 30, 1999 caused a 27th criticality that killed 2 of them and exposed others to excessive radia- tion.

Meanwhile, at a nuclear reactor in Pripyat in Ukraine, metal structures broke causing October 1999 a gamma ray source to fall out of its container, and 2 workers were exposed to radia- tion. This reactor would subsequently be shut down until November.

During pipe maintenance at the Wolsung-3 reactor in South Korea, there was a leak of approximately 12 gallons of heavy water. A couple of Korea Electric Power Corpora- October 4, 1999 tion workers were initially exposed, but then 20 more were exposed during the cleanup.

An unexpectedly strong storm flooded a nuclear power plant at Blayais, France, December 27, 1999 damaging injection pumps and containment safety systems and forcing emergency shutdown. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

In the Barents Sea, the Oscar-class Russian submarine Kursk sank during a naval exercise, taking down with it all 118 on board. The nuclear reactor compartment had withstood the initial explosions, allowing its 2 reactors to automatically shut down, so there was not a and there would not be widespread contamination. August 12, 2000 Of the crew 23 survived the explosions, for a few hours in the submarine’s 9th com- partment, but the government of Russia was still lying and obfuscating about the acci- dent while their remaining became consumed and they expired. Parts of the submarine would be brought up to the surface and the fuel of the reactors would be salvaged.

During refueling operations on Reactor 2 at the Chapelcross nuclear power station in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, an irradiated fuel element did not release from its grabber and then snagged and got lifted out of its shielding, resulting in the operators on the pile cap being exposed to the intense radiation being emitted from First Quarter 2001 the irradiated fuel element. Personnel responded quickly and the dose was small. This did, however, reveal shortfalls in the safety of the refueling operation and the licensee halted all refueling operations while it reviewed the safety of the equipment. The incident would be judged as due to inadequate design and operation and classi- fied on the International Nuclear Event Scale at Level 1 (that is, as an anomaly).

At Manche in France, improper installation of condensers caused control systems and January 21, 2002 safety valves to fail, forcing a 2-month shutdown.

At the Davis-Besse reactor in Oak Harbor, Ohio, the severe corrosion of a control rod February 16, 2002 would produce a 24-month outage.

At Nuclear Reactor #6 in Bruce B station near Ontario, Canada, a channel mainte- June 11, 2002 nance procedure damaged 2 pressure tubes and calandria tubes, that would need to be replaced.

At a fast breeder reactor near Kalpakkam, India almost 100 kilos of radioactive October 22, 2002 sodium leaked into a purification cabin, destroying a number of valves and operating systems.

During the final testing of a new salt-less uranium processing method at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee Y-12 facility, there was a small explosion and fire. The explosion occurred in an unvented vessel containing unreacted calcium, water, and depleted ura- nium. An exothermic reaction in the vessel generated enough steam to burst this con- February 2003 tainer, but the small explosion breached the glovebox allowing air to enter, and ignited some loose uranium powder. 3 employees were contaminated. BWXT Y-12 (now B&W Y-12), a partnership of Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel, would pay a fine amounting to $82,500.

Duke Power Corporation advised the US federal government that it had stopped its tests of MOX mixed-oxide fuel pellets made by mingling “recycled” weapons-grade plutonium from old US and USSR A-bomb warheads with commercial power grade January 10, 2004 uranium fuel in its nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina. Its nuclear engi- neers confessed that they were unable to understand what was happening or predict what would happen. The fuel was expanding and nobody could figure this out. Due to safety and liability concerns, Duke Power would abandon this program.

At the Cattenom-2 nuclear reactor near Lorraine, France, inadequate electrical cables May 16, 2004 produced a fire that damaged safety systems. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

Rupture of an unmaintained steam pipe at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant 3 in Fukui Prefecture, Japan killed 4 workers and injured 7 (a subsequent investigation August 9, 2004 would reveal the necessity of creating a massive and systematic inspection program for these Japanese nuclear plants).

At at the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant near Sellafield in the United Kingdom, April 19, 2005 20 “tonnes” of uranium and 160 kilos of plutonium had leaked from a cracked pipe without anyone noticing.

Oleg Khinsagov and 3 Georgian accomplices were arrested in Russia with 79.5 grams February 2006 of 89% .

An electrical fault at Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Forsmark, Sweden forced a July 25, 2006 reactor to shut down.

November 1, 2006 In London, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium-210.

At the largest nuclear power station in the world, Tokyo Electric’s Kashiwazaki- July 16, 2007 Kariwa 7-unit group, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale caused radio- active water to spill into the Sea of Japan.

When burglars with unknown intentions infiltrated the Pelindaba nuclear research November 2007 facility near Pretoria, South Africa and then escaped, they had not acquired any of the fissile materials held at the facility.

At a nuclear plant near Tricastin, France, when dozens of liters of wastewater contam- July 13, 2008 inated with uranium were accidentally discharged onto the ground, this went into a river nearby.

During a defueling procedure at the Gravelines, France nuclear power plant, the oper- August 9, 2009 ation needed to be suspended because the spent fuel rods jammed and the assembly system failed to properly eject them from the reactor.

At a nuclear power plant in Hamaoka, Japan, radioactive water leaked and 34 workers were exposed. At the Darlington nuclear station near Clarington, Ontario, about December 2009 200,000 liters of water containing traces of radioactive tritium were released from a storage tank by worker error into Lake Ontario.

For approximately 45 minutes commanders at a US Air Force base in Wyoming were deprived of most forms of command, control, and security monitoring over 50 nuclear ICBMs. The missiles had been taken offline because a suspected hardware problem was causing multiple errors in their control computers. Although these commanders October 23, 2010 would insist that the missiles had remained secure and had never been susceptible to outside attempts to gain control, a former Air Force launch officer, Bruce G. Blair, has pointed out that there’s simply no known way to ensure that such isolated missiles are not hijacked and launched by disloyal missile crews, or even by hackers.

At Fukushima, Japan a tsunami flooded and damaged 5 active nuclear reactors (a 6th reactor was shut down at the time), drowning 2 workers. Backup electrical power March 12, 2011 generators were submerged and this caused overheating, meltdowns, and evacuations. During the cleanup a worker would die suddenly while carrying equipment. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SOME CALLS ARE CLOSER THAN OTHERS

CLOSE CALLS

At the Nuclear Generating Station in Pickering, Ontario, a site which, with 8 CANDU reactors 2 of which are now shut down and defueled, qualifies as one of the largest in March 14, 2011 the world, when a pump seal failed 73,000 liters of demineralized water leaked into Lake Ontario (according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission this, although it qualified as “an accident at a nuclear plant,” was at negligible risk to the public).

Confronted with high levels of radioactivity in the cooling water at Tsuruga west of May 2, 2011 Tokyo, the Japan Atomic Power Company pledged that henceforward they would be checking for radioactivity daily rather than weekly.

One person was killed and 4 injured, one seriously, in a blast at a furnace used to melt September 12, 2011 metallic waste in the Marcoule, France nuclear site.

In Karachi, Pakistan, during a routine maintenance shutdown heavy water leaked out October 18, 2011 of a feeder pipe to the KANUPP nuclear reactor. The affected area would be isolated for 7 hours, during which radioactive materials would be mopped up.

When a worker snapped a switch at 7:45 PM local time at No. 1 reactor at Tsuruga west of Tokyo, to turn on a spare electrical device of its water processing facility, November 12, 2011 there was a short circuit and a series of hot sparks that caused a fire. No casualties were reported and the Japan Atomic Power Company said that since this reactor was being decommissioned anyway, there could have been no leakage of radiation.

At a nuclear facility near Penly, France, there was a fire on a primary pump of the 2d April 5, 2012 reactor, followed by a small radioactive leak inside that pump.

There was an unfortunate incident at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Oarai Research and Development Center in Ibaraki Prefecture in which, during a check on radioactive storage inside a “controlled” room, a bag containing radioactive material June 6, 2017 got torn open. This caused a worker to inhale plutonium, and produced the internal radiation exposure of 4 others. There was no escape of radiation into the external environment.