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Nuclear

This is a compliation of all declared events at nuclear plants/facilities that required an emergency classification under one of the four levels (for plants) or two levels (for other facilities) designated by the NRC from 1999-2006. For plants those are – Unusual Event, Alert, Site Area Emergency and General Emergency. Unusual event the least severe, general emergency the most. For other facilities there are alerts and site area emergencies only.

Each entry is in this form: date, emergency classification, reactor/plant, location, reason for emergency.

2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
Resources
Stats & Totals

(Compiled from NRC Event Notification Reports – click the dates to link to the reports, more than one incident per report, you’ll generally have to scroll to find a specific incident). Have not updated the database to include the incidents from 1999, will get to that as time allows. In the meantime check out what I posted so far.

Comments»

1. yinn - May 17, 2006

Holy cow, I had NO idea how often these alerts & events occurred.

2. dr. gonzo - May 17, 2006

It amazed me as well, of course, the causes are various and some really are quite innocuous and unpreventable. For instance in 2005 the majority of the summer’s unusual events were due to hurricanes.

Either way, its worrisome at best and catastrophic at worse. At some point I intend to look at the data collectively and search for trends. i.e. which plants have the worst records etc.

3. s B - November 1, 2007

But please realize that sometimes small events may require us to declre an “event” when there is no real threat to public saftey- it is only because the nuclear industry is careful (and required) to make sure the authorities (NRC) are informed of small things as well as large things. Alerts and unusual events are not necessarily nuclear safety issues.
Working at a nuke plant is pretty safe and the built in systems work.

4. dr. gonzo - January 13, 2008

Yeah, most of them are nothing, but a few are worrisome. I think our energy needs could be fulfilled in other ways but am not necessarily against nuclear power in the interim, if can be done affordably, which it can’t, not when the costs of new plants going online are considered.


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