Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
According to this scale each event is classi
ed at seven levels: level 0 indicates
anomalies without safety signi
cance, also called
deviations
,
levels 1
3 are
-
de
Every increased level on the scale is ten
times greater of the previous one. In this scale, the Chernobyl disaster has been
considered a
ned
incidents
; levels 4
7
accidents.
-
major accident
(level 7), the Kyshtym disaster of 1957 is de
ned a
(level 6), while Windscale (1957) and Three Mile Island events
has been valuated as
serious accident
(level 5).
The medical research conducted by national and international (e.g. activities of
the United Nations Scienti
accidents with wider consequences
c Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) also
promoted speci
c knowledge to face the consequences of the
accident. The biggest consequence of Chernobyl was also in law and of interna-
tional security. In fact, the disaster exposed the serious de
c medical and scienti
ciencies of international
legal safeguards. The result was the signature, under the auspices of the IAEA, of
two international Conventions on the subject of nuclear safety and a more general
change in the provisions concerning the safety of power to exploit atomic energy.
Moreover, even in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, the main inter-
national organizations on nuclear energy began to concentrate their efforts in
monitoring the safety levels of plants to produce energy as well as deposits of waste
storage in the world. In spite of these efforts the occurrence of new accidents was
not avoided. Among these events, could be mentioned the incident occurred in 1999
in the central Japanese Toikamura, the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Sweden in
2006 and the dramatic Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster (classi
ed
as level 7 accident according to the International Nuclear Event Scale) occurred on
March 2011 as a consequence of the tsunami of the T
hoku earthquake.
Besides this type of disasters it should be added those events occurred in other
areas that previously were shown to be particularly at risk of serious accidents. The
mining sector, especially in China, Soviet Union and later in Russia and other
countries of the former Soviet Bloc, but also in many developing countries, continued
to record incidents cost the lives of dozens and sometimes hundreds of miners. Even
the dams and ponds, despite the improvement of construction techniques and safety
procedures, have maintained a high level of risk. The collapse of Banquiao and
Shimantan reservoir dams in China, which took place in 1975 (but that Chinese
authorities con
ō
rmed only after many years), with its 26,000 dead is probably one of
the worst disasters in history. Serious incidents of this type have been registered also
in western countries. In Italy, despite the serious Vajont disaster experience, in July
1985, the collapse of two retention basins and the resulting landslide of mud, sand and
water was the cause of the disaster of Stava (268 victims). The disaster of Stava, as
previous accidents, such as the Aberfan disaster of 1966 in Wales, which claimed 144
lives or the Buffalo Creek disaster happened in the United States in 1972 (125 vic-
tims), placed in evidence weaknesses in control procedures and the bad management
by the authorities responsible for management of invaded that led to talk of the
inevitability of the disaster to institutional and even cultural reasons. 30 In this respect,
30 Mclean and Johnes ( 2000 ) and Stern ( 2008 ).
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