Top Countries With Major Nuclear Power Disasters

Canada has not had a nuclear-related incident above level 2 on the International Nuclear Event Scale since 1990. Five of these 22 reports are “below scale,” meaning they were rated zero on the INES, including two reports following earthquakes that occurred in 2010 and 2013. Canada’s two worst nuclear plant accidents occurred in the 1950s, both at a plant in Chalk River, Ontario. The first in 1952 released radioactivity into the local environment, and the second event occurred six years later when a radiation leak at the facility had to be contained.

China has reported eight nuclear and radiological-related incidents since 1990, including three that reached level 3 on the INES. The first of these occurred in January 1992 when a lost piece of cobalt-60 in Shanxi province was found by a man who later died along with his brother and father from acute radiation poisoning. The second level 3 event took place at an electrical wire factory in Tianjin, when two workers were injured by exposure to a high frequency, high voltage electron accelerator. The third event, in 1996, injured a worker at a polyethylene project in Jihua after he was accidentally exposed to iridium-192.

After the United States and China, France ranks third in the world in nuclear power electric production. Relative to its population and geographic size, France is the most nuclear power-dependent country in the world and it ranks second on this list, after the United States, in the number of reported nuclear and radiological-related incidents. Though none of these events led to radiological leaks, two incidents injured or killed reactor workers. One incident, in September 2011, was a furnace blast at the Marcoule Nuclear Site. On the other, in November 1992, three workers entered an active nuclear particle accelerator without protective gear in Forbach.

India ranks third in the number of reported nuclear and radiological-related incidents since 1990, after the United States and France, despite having significantly fewer nuclear power reactors. All but two events have ranked lower than INES level 3, but one of them measured level 4.

In that event, on April 7, 2010, a scrap metal dealer came to a hospital with radiation-induced symptoms. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the source of the radiation was discarded gamma cells (used for several industrial and medical purposes) containing cobalt-60 at three scrap metal shops in the Mayapuri district of West Delhi, requiring an extensive cleanup operation. A level 3 event occurred in 1993 when a turbine fire at a nuclear power plant in Narora, Uttar Pradesh state, set off an emergency cooling system that prevented a meltdown.

Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011, instigated by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, is the largest nuclear disaster since the April 1986 Chernobyl accident in Soviet Ukraine. Both accidents reached INES level 7, the highest possible rating.

The Fukushima accident led to numerous other incidents over the following years involving the management and control of contaminated water. The death toll from the Fukushima accident (both from direct exposure and ensuing health risks) was much lower than Chernobyl’s. The reason for this has been attributed to improved reactor design and safety protocol and Japan’s early response that involved the immediate evacuation of 160,000 people.

Forty-five of South Korea’s 52 nuclear and radiation-related incidents since 1990 registered a zero on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, meaning the incidents had no safety significance. Out of the seven incidents that had safety significance, only one rose to level 3, meaning at least one worker was exposed to a non-lethal injury (i.e. radiation burns) from a leak contained to the facility, and the leak may have had the potential to be a more dangerous incident.

That mishap occurred in March 2009 when a radiography worker at a pipe-welding workshop in the southern city of Jinju was exposed to enough iridium-192 to be injured by severe burns on his fingers from an excess full-body dose of radiation.

Since 1990, Russia has reported four nuclear and radiation-related incidents that measured INES level 3. Two of them occurred on Feb. 2, 1993, when a tornado damaged transmission lines that triggered an emergency protection system at two of the four reactors at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant near the northwestern town of Polyarnye Zori, 765 miles north of St. Petersburg. The higher INES rating was earned in part due to deficiencies in safety protocols.

Two other level 3 events occurred. One at the nuclear plant in eastern Siberia near the town in Bilibino on July 10, 1991, and the other at a plant about 60 miles from the western city of Smolensk just days later, on July 22, 1991.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant continued operations until December 2000, nearly 14 years after April 26, 1986, when the meltdown of one of its reactors caused the worst nuclear accident on record, an accident that made the vicinity radioactive for the next 20,000 years. Between 1990 and the plant’s permanent shutdown, Ukraine reported 18 other incidents at the plant, including two that measured level 3 on the INES. in April 1991 and November 1995.

One other INES level 3 event occurred at a nuclear plant in western Ukraine in February 1991. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently announced the appropriation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, a move that Ukraine calls “null and void.”

The United Kingdom has used nuclear power since the 1950s. Most of its reported nuclear and radiological-related incidents since 1990 involve nuclear power facilities, notably the Sellafield multi-function nuclear site on the coast of Cumbria in northwestern England. In 1957, the Windcastle Fire at Sellafield was an INES level 6 accident.

All but two of the incidents since 1990 measured below INES level 3. The first of the two-level 3 events occurred at Sellafield in September 1992, when plutonium nitrate leaked from a corroded pipe into a containment cell while safety devices failed to detect further leakage out of the cell. The second level 3 incident took place in April 2005, when a fractured pipe at a reprocessing plant at Sellafield leaked uranium and plutonium dissolved in nitric acid.

Having the world’s largest nuclear power plant industry and a large number of industries that use irradiated materials, it should be no surprise that the United States reported the most nuclear and radiological-related incidents since 1990. France is the only other country with more than 100 of these events during that time.

Though there were several INES level 4 accidents in the U.S. before 1990, including INES level 5 at Three Mile Island in 1979, all but three of the events since 1990 rated below INES level 3. The three-level 3 events included a March 2002 incident at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, when an inspector discovered a severely eroded reactor component that could have caused a more serious incident.