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ATOMIC ACCIDENTS
(James Mahaffey)

About Author:
Nuclear engineer James Mahaffey was a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech
Research Institute and has worked for the US Defence Department’s Defense Nuclear
Agency, the Air Force Air Logistics Center and the National Ground Intelligence Center.
He is also the author of Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of
Nuclear Power

Synopsis:
Atomic Accidents (2014) explores the evolution of one of the most fascinating and yet
controversial technologies of our times, nuclear energy. It explore the development of
nuclear technology and reveal the details behind the tragic accidents that occurred along
the way.

Understand past mistakes and the future promise of nuclear power.

1. When Japan was struck by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, one of its coastal
nuclear power plants, Fukushima 1, experienced a catastrophic meltdown. As a result,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel changed her previously positive view of nuclear
power to one of outright distrust almost overnight.
2. This disaster was the most recent in the history of nuclear power. Such accidents, as
rare as they are, are sufficiently horrific to change public opinion irrevocably. Nuclear
power was once seen as an energy source that held the key to a greener future. After
Fukushima, however, this is no longer the case.
3. Through exploring the history of atomic energy, you’ll discover how decades of
development have led society toward safer ground and more stable ways of
harnessing nuclear power. Given the relatively short history of nuclear
experimentation, the years ahead just might bring us into a new nuclear era,
completely free of nuclear fears. In Fol Pages, you’ll learn
• how a decade of technology determined the fate of Fukushima’s two plants;
• why human error played a huge part in the Chernobyl meltdown; and
• how 300 years, not 30,000, could be the new “safe” number for nuclear waste.

Atomic Accidents By James Mahaffey

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THE DISCOVERY OF RADIATION AND RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS

WAS BOTH EXCITING AND DEADLY.

1. At the end of the nineteenth century, Nikola Tesla accidently discovered radiation.
Then, in 1896, after more research and experimentation, Wilhelm Rontgen published
the first paper on radiation.
2. Soon, scientists around the world were researching this new phenomenon. Scientists
Marie and Pierre Curie soon discovered a radioactive element that they
named radium.
3. Yet underneath the excitement, radiation held a dark secret: it was mortally
dangerous.
4. The pioneers of radiation research were not aware of its pernicious effects. They
would all suffer, in one way or another, from the negative effects of radiation.
5. Tesla’s health deteriorated after repeated exposure to radiation. An assistant of
Thomas Edison’s died from overexposure; Pierre Curie was weakened from
prolonged exposure to radioactive materials.
6. While new medical applications for radiation were discovered, because people didn’t
yet know how truly dangerous it could be, those using these new methods didn’t take
sufficient precautions.
7. X-ray machines became a widely used diagnostic tool, yet technicians, exposed on a
daily basis, suffered from leukemia and cataracts. Today medical professionals use
appropriate precautions to protect themselves from excess radiation exposure.
8. Despite the health risks, radiation still offered many exciting solutions. Radium
therapy, in which tumors are exposed to radium, became one of the few effective
treatments against cancer at the time.
9. The “healing power” of radiation, however, was a popular idea and one that foolhardy
entrepreneurs tried to cash in on, often with tragic consequences.
10. Businessman William Bailey created a “medicine” that was essentially water enriched
with small quantities of radioactive materials. His tonic, “Radithor,” was popular until
people started getting sick. Millionaire Eben McBurney Byers, who had consumed
large quantities of the tonic, suffered from weakening bones, so much so that his jaw
almost completely deteriorated.

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11. Such tragedies changed the public perception of radiation, and are the source of
modern society’s fear of the phenomenon. But those fears would only deepen as
scientists explored a further use of radiation – the nuclear bomb.

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RESEARCH FOR THE NUCLEAR BOMB WAS AN EXPERIMENT

ON A MASSIVE SCALE WITH UNKNOWN CONSEQUENCES
1. By the late 1930s, the public was well aware of the dangers of radiation and its
potential to kill. But despite the risks, the campaign to build an atomic bomb was seen
by advocates as a way to end World War II with a minimum of casualties.
2. Although the United States was the first country to build a bomb, German scientists
were close behind. US scientists worked in secret laboratories in Washington State
and New Mexico, and the United States recruited some of the most talented scientists
of the time for the project. Many of these men, including Albert Einstein, had fled from
Germany’s Nazi regime.
3. In Germany, the Nazis established an atomic program at the University of Leipzig. It
was led by Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the few world-class
nuclear scientists who had not fled the Nazi regime.
4. But despite the talent of those involved, both groups still suffered fatal accidents in the
race for a nuclear bomb.
5. Two US scientists, Harry Daghlian and Louis Alexander Slotin, prepared radioactive
material for the bombs yet didn’t take enough safety precautions. As a result, they
were exposed to fatal amounts of radiation and were the only US casualties of the
atomic bomb campaign.
6. In the other camp, the facilities in Leipzig caught fire while German scientists
attempted to induce a nuclear reaction during a test, killing several scientists.
7. In the end, the United States was the first to build an atomic bomb, yet officials really
weren’t prepared for the amount of destruction this new weapon would cause.
8. When the bomb was dropped in Japan, scientists were shocked that everything
flammable within 12 miles of the drop’s epicenter caught fire. While scientists knew
how much damage the released radiation would cause, they underestimated the
bomb’s intense thermal energy.
9. Some 83,000 Japanese would die, many from radiation-induced cancer some
decades later.
10. During World War II, the destructive potential of nuclear power was demonstrated to
its fullest. How would this potential be contained and managed afterward?

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ACCIDENTS WITH NUCLEAR BOMBS DURING MILITARY

EXERCISES HAPPEN MORE OFTEN THAN YOU MIGHT THINK

1. Looking at the devastation caused in Japan, one would think that today’s nuclear
bombs are closely watched, carefully handled and highly protected. But this is not
exactly the case.
2. In fact, there have been many accidents involving nuclear bombs. Some 65 cases of
incidents with nuclear weapons have been documented to date, and that’s only bombs
belonging to the United States.
3. For example, airplanes have accidently dropped nuclear weapons they were carrying,
or airplanes with nuclear weapons on board have crashed. For a long time the US
military tried to keep such events secret, but several incidents eventually were leaked
to the public.
4. Many of these accidents were caused by simple human error, which then triggered a
terrible chain of events. Some egregious accidents include a military crew dropping a
bomb on a civilian’s home, injuring but not killing a family, and a B-52 bomber crash
in Southern Greenland.
5. The particular design of a nuclear bomb intentionally prevents a full-scale nuclear
reaction. Indeed, design engineers specifically considered the potential danger of an
unintended nuclear detonation before the first US bomb was dropped on Japan in
1945.
6. For a nuclear bomb to cause a nuclear reaction, several different mechanisms have
to be activated. Some of these are switched off during exercises or during
transportation. But while many accidents thankfully don’t result in a nuclear explosion,
these events still leave behind radioactive material that must be cleaned.
7. These stories show that while mistakes with nuclear bombs are unavoidable, robust
design can help to avoid catastrophe. Unfortunately, many nuclear power plants don’t
follow similar guidelines.

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THE DISASTER IN CHERNOBYL CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO BAD

NUCLEAR POWER PLANT DESIGN AND HUMAN ERROR
1. In the 1970s, engineers were confident that nuclear power plants could avoid large-
scale accidents. Unfortunately, the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986 proved them
wrong.
2. This catastrophic event took place during a routine safety operation. At the time, no
technician with an advanced understanding of nuclear physics was on duty. What’s
more, no staff knew how to fully implement the required safety measures in case of
an accident.
3. Poor decisions by physicist Anatoly Dyatlov led his staff to commit more errors. He
instructed personnel to override the official emergency procedures, which essentially
made the meltdown worse.
4. Politics also played a part in the disaster. Soviet engineers worked in isolation from
the rest of the world. The Soviet Union was secretive about its technological
developments; there was no knowledge sharing with experts from the West, for
example.
5. Consequently, the Chernobyl plant itself was built using outdated technology and
posed many problems. Its graphite moderated light-water reactor model, for example,
had already been scrapped by Western countries.
6. To make matters worse, the Soviets didn’t immediately release news of the reactor
meltdown. Until 1986, the government kept any radioactive leaks as classified
information, fearing that such details would cause citizens to panic.
7. Not only were the immediate areas around Chernobyl affected, but radioactive matter
was spread by wind to neighboring European countries, increasing the levels of
radiation in the soil and contaminating vegetation.
8. Yet after Chernobyl, many years passed without a nuclear disaster on a similar scale.
Experts perhaps hoped that this was to be the last large nuclear catastrophe of its
kind.

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THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR PLANT WAS POISED FOR

DISASTER, GIVEN ITS LOCATION IN AN EARTHQUAKE ZONE

1. Even though Japan’s Pacific coast is a hotbed of major earthquakes, officials still
deemed this area an appropriate location for two nuclear power plants: Fukushima 1
and Fukushima 2.
2. The disaster in 2011 was inevitable for a number of reasons.
3. The Japanese government, as well as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, ignored
scientists’ repeated warnings of a potentially serious earthquake in the region. Also,
the company failed to improve a coastal wall to protect the plants in case of a tsunami.
4. While the breakwater along the coast could protect the plants from waves up to 18.7
feet high, the tsunami that followed the 9.0 earthquake were 46 feet high! What’s more,
a series of aftershocks impeded efforts to reduce the scale of the meltdown.
5. One of the main reasons that Fukushima 1 failed was age. The plant was built in the
1970s and lacked the latest technological upgrades. Fukushima 2, just seven miles
away, was designed in the 1980s; its superior technology helped to prevent a
meltdown there. Fukushima 2’s generators are air-cooled, for example, while
Fukushima 1’s generators are seawater-cooled.
6. Human error, like with Chernobyl, also played a large role at Fukushima 1. An operator
took it upon himself to override a computerized safety mechanism that monitored the
cooling of the power plant. It’s likely that the meltdown could have been avoided had
this automatic trigger not been interrupted.
7. One seemingly minor decision caused a chain reaction which exacerbated an already
crisis situation, making disaster inevitable.

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IT WILL TAKE TIME AND MONEY TO ENVISION A NEW FUTURE

FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT DESIGN

1. In the 1950s, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy designed a small-scale power
plant to power nuclear submarines. His design would in time come to dominate the
civil nuclear industry.
2. Why was this the case? First, Rickover’s design was both efficient and robust.
3. The challenge of designing within the restrictive conditions of a submarine inspired
the admiral to come up with new ideas. His plant generated more fuel than it burned,
for one; it also didn’t use liquid sodium, which could leak dangerously.
4. Rickover’s successful submarine design inspired civil industry to adopt a similar
design. Almost all nuclear power plants operating today are based on some variation
of the Rickover plant.
5. There have been other promising designs, yet market conditions and a lack of
investment have prevented these ideas from being realized.
6. For example, the direct contact reactor (DCR) was a promising alternative to the
Rickover design. The goal of the DCR was to be highly efficient; its fuel was molten
plutonium. By the 1960s, a mockup was constructed in Los Alamos. Yet at that time,
the government’s budget for experimental reactors was pulled and the project was
never realized.
7. Engineers also experimented with a molten salt reactor. This reactor used thorium, a
radioactive metal that both exists in large quantities in nature and isn’t fissile – that is,
it won’t split and start a nuclear reaction on its own. This makes thorium more stable
than plutonium or uranium, for example.
8. Crucially, radioactive waste from thorium is no longer dangerous after 300 years,
whereas the waste from uranium fission remains dangerous for some 30,000 years!
9. The project ran for four years but was then abandoned as the Rickover reactor had
by then dominated civil markets.
10. In sum, it would be unfortunate to stop exploring alternative methods to better produce
nuclear energy. The potential dangers of nuclear power will always be with us. Yet
nuclear disasters will become less and less probable as technology improves, and
engineers learn from past mistakes.

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FINAL SUMMARY

1. Nuclear power can be volatile and potentially dangerous. Yet from a history of nuclear
mistakes and fatal consequences, we can learn and thus reduce the probability of
future disasters. The world’s engineers continue to seek ways of harnessing the
wonders of nuclear power to benefit the economy and society without damaging the
environment or our way of life.
2. Fukushima (2014) tells the story of how one of the biggest tsunamis in Japan’s history
combined with government neglect, corporate interest and propaganda to create the
most serious nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The book was written by the Union of
Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that brings together science and political advocacy.

Atomic Accidents By James Mahaffey