Nuclear Meltdown - Meltdown Incidents

Meltdown Incidents

A number of Soviet Navy nuclear submarines experienced nuclear meltdowns, including K-27, K-140, and K-431.

• There was also a fatal core meltdown at SL-1, an experimental U.S. military reactor in Idaho.

Large-scale nuclear meltdowns at civilian nuclear power plants include:

• the Lucens reactor, Switzerland, in 1969.
• the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., in 1979.
• the Chernobyl disaster at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, USSR, in 1986.
• the Fukushima I nuclear accidents following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, March 2011.

Other core meltdowns have occurred at:

• NRX (military), Ontario, Canada, in 1952
• BORAX-I (experimental), Idaho, U.S.A., in 1954
• EBR-I (military), Idaho, U.S.A., in 1955
• Windscale (military), Sellafield, England, in 1957 (see Windscale fire)
• Sodium Reactor Experiment, (civilian), California, U.S.A., in 1959
• Fermi 1 (civilian), Michigan, U.S.A., in 1966
• Chapelcross nuclear power station (civilian), Scotland, in 1967
• Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant (civilian), France, in 1969
• A1 plant, (civilian) at Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia, in 1977
• Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant (civilian), France, in 1980
• Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant (civilian), East Germany, in 1989