28 Mar Nuclear Accidents that Taught us Lessons

Nuclear power has been a divisive topic since it first came into use. The splitting of the atom at Los Alamos brought with it deadly and destructive weapons, but also a source of energy that could be used to power our homes and businesses without the need to burn fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, in these early days of using nuclear power, mistakes were made, and accidents happened – the most famous nuclear accident is of course the Chernobyl disaster, but before that the UK and the USA both had accidents at their own nuclear power stations.

Windscale in the UK was a nuclear power plant built in the 1950s, and in 1957 it caught fire – the most severe nuclear accident in the history of the UK. A fire raged for 16 hours, caused by a routine heating being carried out, and before it was put out it released some radioactive iodine.

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In America, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 was also a dangerous accident. A partial meltdown of the reactor occurred and released radioactive substances into the local area. In America, a new series of safety protocols were created to ensure this didn’t happen again.

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Modern nuclear power stations are built with mistakes made in the past in mind. Safety and technology have both advanced since the earlier days of nuclear power, and new ways of doing things like those created by this Manchester robotics company https://hotrobotics.co.uk/facilities/university-of-manchester-2/ will help to avert the risks from using nuclear power stations to obtain energy.