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Soviet Submarine K-431
''K-431'' (; originally the ''K-31'') was a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine that had a reactor accident on 10 August 1985. It was commissioned on 30 September 1965. The 1985 explosion occurred during refueling of the submarine at Chazhma Bay, Dunay, Vladivostok. There were ten fatalities and 49 other people suffered radiation injuries. ''Time'' magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters". Reactor refuelling disaster ''K-431'', completed around 1965 as unit ''K-31'', was a Project 675 or Echo II-class submarine with two pressurized water reactors, each of 70 MWt capacity and using 20%-enriched uranium as fuel. On 10 August 1985, the submarine was being refuelled at the Chazhma Bay naval facility near Vladivostok. The submarine had been refuelled and the reactor tank lid was being replaced. The lid was laid incorrectly and had to be lifted again with the control rods attached. A beam was supposed to prevent the lid from being lifte ...
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Amur Shipbuilding Plant
OJSC Amur Shipbuilding Plant (, ''Amurskiy Sudostroitelnyy Zavod'', and also called the "Leninskiy Komsomol Shipyard") is an important shipyard in eastern Russia, based in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and founded in 1932. It employs 15,000 people, and produces both civilian and military ships, including nuclear submarines. Around 97 submarines (56 nuclear-powered and 41 conventional) as well as 36 warships were built at the yard. The shipyard started building nuclear submarines in 1957, with the first one completed in 1960. Submarines built at the Amur Shipbuilding plant include Delta-class submarine, Delta I class ballistic missile submarines, Echo-class submarine, Echo I and II class cruise missile submarines and Akula-class submarine, ''Akula''-class attack submarines. In 1992, then-president Boris Yeltsin announced that the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk would remain the only nuclear submarine construction site. In 2008, the first nuclear submarine built at the shipyard in 13 years ...
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Criticality Excursion
A criticality accident is an accidental uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction. It is sometimes referred to as a critical excursion, critical power excursion, divergent chain reaction, or simply critical. Any such event involves the unintended accumulation or arrangement of a critical mass of fissile material, for example enriched uranium or plutonium. Criticality accidents can release potentially fatal radiation doses if they occur in an unprotected environment. Under normal circumstances, a critical or supercritical fission reaction (one that is self-sustaining in power or increasing in power) should only occur inside a safely shielded location, such as a reactor core or a suitable test environment. A criticality accident occurs if the same reaction is achieved unintentionally, for example in an unsafe environment or during reactor maintenance. Though dangerous and frequently lethal to humans within the immediate area, the critical mass formed would not be capable of pr ...
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Chernobyl Disaster
On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The response involved more than Chernobyl liquidators, 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18billion Soviet ruble, rubles (about $84.5billion USD in 2025). It remains the worst nuclear disaster and the List of disasters by cost, most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of US$700 billion. The disaster occurred while running a test to simulate cooling the reactor during an accident in blackout conditions. The operators carried out the test despite an accidental drop in reactor power, and due to a design issue, attempting to shut down the reactor in those conditio ...
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Spent Nuclear Fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and, depending on its point along the nuclear fuel cycle, it will have different isotopic constituents than when it started. Nuclear fuel rods become progressively more radioactive (and less thermally useful) due to neutron activation as they are fissioned, or "burnt", in the reactor. A fresh rod of low enriched uranium pellets (which can be safely handled with gloved hands) will become a highly lethal gamma emitter after 1–2 years of core irradiation, unsafe to approach unless under many feet of water shielding. This makes their invariable accumulation and safe temporary storage in spent fuel pools a prime source of high level radioactive waste and a major ongoing issue for future permanent disposal. Nature of spent fuel Nanomaterial pro ...
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Isotope
Isotopes are distinct nuclear species (or ''nuclides'') of the same chemical element. They have the same atomic number (number of protons in their Atomic nucleus, nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), but different nucleon numbers (mass numbers) due to different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. While all isotopes of a given element have similar chemical properties, they have different atomic masses and physical properties. The term isotope is derived from the Greek roots isos (wikt:ἴσος, ἴσος "equal") and topos (wikt:τόπος, τόπος "place"), meaning "the same place"; thus, the meaning behind the name is that different isotopes of a single element occupy the same position on the periodic table. It was coined by Scottish doctor and writer Margaret Todd (doctor), Margaret Todd in a 1913 suggestion to the British chemist Frederick Soddy, who popularized the term. The number of protons within the atomic nuc ...
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Fission Product
Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the release of heat energy (kinetic energy of the nuclei), and gamma rays. The two smaller nuclei are the ''fission products''. (See also Fission products (by element)). About 0.2% to 0.4% of fissions are ternary fissions, producing a third light nucleus such as helium-4 (90%) or tritium (7%). The fission products themselves are usually unstable and therefore radioactive. Due to being relatively neutron-rich for their atomic number, many of them quickly undergo beta decay. This releases additional energy in the form of beta particles, antineutrinos, and gamma rays. Thus, fission events normally result in beta and additional gamma radiation that begins immediately after, even though this radiation is not produced directly by the fission even ...
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Noble Gas
The noble gases (historically the inert gases, sometimes referred to as aerogens) are the members of Group (periodic table), group 18 of the periodic table: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), radon (Rn) and, in some cases, oganesson (Og). Under Standard temperature and pressure, standard conditions, the first six of these Chemical element, elements are odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low chemical reactivity and cryogenics, cryogenic boiling points. The properties of oganesson are uncertain. The intermolecular force between noble gas atoms is the very weak London dispersion force, so their boiling points are all cryogenic, below . The noble gases' Chemically inert, inertness, or tendency not to Chemical reaction, react with other chemical substances, results from their electron configuration: their Electron shell, outer shell of valence electrons is "full", giving them little tendency to participate in chemical reactions. Only a few hun ...
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Megacurie
The curie (symbol Ci) is a non- SI unit of radioactivity originally defined in 1910. According to a notice in ''Nature'' at the time, it was to be named in honour of Pierre Curie, but was considered at least by some to be in honour of Marie Skłodowska-Curie as well, and is in later literature considered to be named for both. It was originally defined as "the quantity or mass of radium emanation in equilibrium with one gram of radium (element)", but is currently defined as 1 Ci = decays per second after more accurate measurements of the activity of Ra (which has a specific activity of ). In 1975 the General Conference on Weights and Measures gave the becquerel (Bq), defined as one nuclear decay per second, official status as the SI unit of activity. Therefore: : 1 Ci = = 37 GBq and : 1 Bq ≅ ≅ 27 pCi While its continued use is discouraged by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other bodies, the curie is still widely used throughout govern ...
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Becquerel
The becquerel (; symbol: Bq) is the unit of radioactivity in the International System of Units (SI). One becquerel is defined as an activity of one per second, on average, for aperiodic activity events referred to a radionuclide. For applications relating to human health this is a small quantity, and SI multiples of the unit are commonly used. The becquerel is named after Henri Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903 for their work in discovering radioactivity. Definition 1 Bq = 1 s−1 A special name was introduced for the reciprocal second (s) to represent radioactivity to avoid potentially dangerous mistakes with prefixes. For example, 1 μs would mean 10 disintegrations per second: , whereas 1 μBq would mean 1 disintegration per 1 million seconds. Other names considered were hertz (Hz), a special name already in use for the reciprocal second (for ''periodic'' events of any kind), and fourier (Fr; after ...
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Dunay Peninsula
Dunay ( rus, Дунай, p=dʊˈnaj) is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) under the administrative jurisdiction of the closed town of Fokino, Primorsky Krai, Russia, located on the coast of the Gulf of Peter the Great. The population of once serviced a Soviet submarine base at the seaport here. History It was formed in 1907 when several families from what is now Moldova arrived at the maritime village of Petrovka. However, these families were not accepted at Petrovka and were advised to move to a small Korean settlement at the bay of Konyushkov. The advice was taken, and the first clay huts were built by these families in a location that is now home to a railroad station. According to the recollections of those who have been living there for a long time, the village of Dunay received its name because when the first settlers saw a small but deep river after arriving at the bay of Konyushkov, they said "We left one big Dunay and arrived at another small one." The wor ...
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Particulate
Particulate matter (PM) or particulates are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. An ''aerosol'' is a mixture of particulates and air, as opposed to the particulate matter alone, though it is sometimes defined as a subset of aerosol terminology. Sources of particulate matter can be natural or anthropogenic. Particulates have impacts on climate and precipitation that adversely affect human health. Types of atmospheric particles include suspended particulate matter; thoracic and respirable particles; inhalable coarse particles, designated PM, which are coarse particles with a diameter of 10 micrometers (μm) or less; fine particles, designated PM, with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less; ultrafine particles, with a diameter of 100 nm or less; and soot. Airborne particulate matter is a Group 1 carcinogen. Particulates are the most harmful form of air pollution as they can penetrate deep into the lungs and brain from blood streams, cau ...
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