Major Nuclear Power Mishaps in 35 Countries Since 1990

Romania began using nuclear power for electrical production in 1996, and since then the plant near the southern town of Cernavodă reported two incidents: the loss of a chunk of cesium-137 from a retired piece of equipment in November 2001 and a ruptured freon storage tank that had no significant impact. In July 2006, a Romania-bound package from Brussels containing iodine-131 disappeared from an Austrian Airlines facility in Austria. It was never recovered.

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.

Slovakia’s most significant reported incident occurred in May 1991, a little less than two years before Czechoslovakia officially split into two sovereign states. That INES level 3 incident occurred at the country’s sole nuclear power plant near the western village of Jaslovské Bohunice, when radioactive water spilled into a reactor hall from a storage tank due to human error.

Most of Slovenia’s reported radiation-related incidents since 1990 have been rated lower than INES level 2. Neither of the two level 2 events occurred at the country’s nuclear power plant near the eastern town of Krško. The first incident occurred in July 2003, when Italian border control discovered cesium-137 in a shipment of Slovenian scrap metal attempting to cross the border at Vrtojba. The second incident took place when four workers were overexposed to radiation while conducting industrial radiography at a thermal power station construction site in the northern town of Šoštanj.

South Africa put its first and only nuclear power plant online in 1984. Since 1990, the Koeberg plant near Cape Town, the only nuclear power plant on the African continent, had reported three incidents, all of them reaching INES level 2, with the most recent occurring on May 12, 2005, when a cooling system failed due to improper reassembly of certain components. Seven of South Africa’s eight reported nuclear and radiological-related incidents were rated level 2 on the INES.