| Date |
Site |
Description of Incident |
| October 7, 1957 |
Windscale plutonium production reactor (near Liverpool, England) |
Fire in the reactor; released radioactive material; blamed for 39 cancer deaths |
| January 3, 1961 |
Idaho Falls, Idaho |
Explosion in the reactor; radiation contained; 3 workers killed |
| October 5, 1966 |
Enrico Fermi demonstration breeder reactor (near Detroit, Michigan) |
Partial core meltdown; radiation contained |
| January 21, 1969 |
Lucens Vad, Switzerland |
Coolant malfunction; released radiation into a cavern; cavern sealed |
| March 22, 1975 |
Brown’s Ferry Reactor (Decatur, Alabama) |
Fire causes cooling water levels to become dangerously low |
| March 28, 1979 |
Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania |
Partial core meltdown; minimal radiation released |
| April 25, 1981 |
Tsunga, Japan |
Workers exposed to radiation during repairs to nuclear plant |
| January 6, 1986 |
Kerr-McGee nuclear plant (Gore, Oklahoma) |
Cylinder of nuclear material burst; 100 workers hospitalized; 1 death |
| April 26, 1986 |
Chernobyl, Ukraine (USSR in 1986) |
Fire and explosions; radioactive material spread over much of Europe; at least 31 dead in the immediate aftermath; tens of thousands of cancer deaths and increased birth defects |
| September 30, 1999 |
Uranium-reprocessing facility (Tokaimura, Japan) |
Container with uranium is overloaded; workers and nearby residents exposed to extremely high radiation levels |
