Both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were caused and/or exacerbated by the actions, inactions and misunderstandings of mere mortals...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Quote:The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident of catastrophic proportions that occurred on 26 April 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and is the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
The disaster occurred on 26 April 1986, at reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near the town of Pripyat, during an unauthorized systems test. A sudden power output surge took place, and when an attempt was made at an emergency shutdown, a more extreme spike in power output occurred which led to the rupture of a reactor vessel as well as a series of explosions. This event exposed the graphite moderator components of the reactor to air and they ignited; the resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive area, including Pripyat.
The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union, and much of Europe. As of December 2000[update], 350,400 people had been evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.[1][2] According to official post-Soviet data, up to 70% of the fallout landed in Belarus.[3]
Despite the accident, Ukraine continued to operate the remaining reactors at Chernobyl for many years. The last reactor at the site was closed down in 2000.[4]
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Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. A 2006 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) states, "Among the 134 emergency workers involved in the immediate mitigation of the Chernobyl accident, severely exposed workers and firemen during the first days, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS (Acute Radiation Syndrome), and 19 more persons died in 1987-2004 from different causes. Among the general population affected by Chernobyl radioactive fallout, the much lower exposures meant that ARS cases did not occur". It is estimated that there may ultimately be a total of 4,000 deaths attributable to the accident, due to increased cancer risk.[6]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident Quote:The Three Mile Island accident was a partial core meltdown in Unit 2 (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg. The plant was owned and operated by General Public Utilities and the Metropolitan Edison Co. It was the most significant accident in the history of the American commercial nuclear power generating industry, resulting in the release of up to 481 PBq (13 million curies) of radioactive gases, but less than 740 GBq (20 curies) of the particularly dangerous iodine-131.[1]
The accident began at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) in the primary system, which allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape.
The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss of coolant accident due to inadequate training and human factors, such as industrial design errors relating to ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant's user interface.
The scope and complexity of the accident became clear over the course of five days, as employees of Metropolitan Edison (Met Ed, the utility operating the plant), Pennsylvania state officials, and members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) tried to understand the problem, communicate the situation to the press and local community, decide whether the accident required an emergency evacuation, and ultimately end the crisis.
In the end, the reactor was brought under control, although full details of the accident were not discovered until much later, following extensive investigations by both a presidential commission and the NRC. The Kemeny Commission Report concluded that "there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the other possible health effects."[2] Several epidemiological studies in the years since the accident have supported the conclusion that radiation releases from the accident had no perceptible effect on cancer incidence in residents near the plant, though these findings have been contested by one team of researchers.[3]
Public reaction to the event was probably influenced by the release of the movie The China Syndrome 12 days before the accident, depicting an accident at a nuclear reactor.[4] Communications from officials during the initial phases of the accident were felt to be confusing.[5] The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a contributor to the decline of new reactor construction that was already underway in the 1970s.
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