Nuclear meltdown of fission product radioactivity, by simple convection. The second test, deliberate shut-off of the secondary coolant loop that supplies the generators, caused the primary circuit to undergo the same safe shutdown. This test simulated the case of a water-cooled reactor losing its steam turbine circuit, perhaps by a leak. This is a list of the major reactor failures in which meltdown played a role: The China syndrome (loss-of-coolant accident) is a hypothetical nuclear reactor operations accident characterized by the severe meltdown of the core components of the reactor, which then burn through the containment vessel and the housing building, then
Nuclear safety in the United States the only known fatal reactor accident in the United States. The accident released about of iodine-131, which was not considered significant due to its location in a remote desert of Idaho. About of fission products were released into the atmosphere. On March 28, 1979, equipment failures and operator error contributed to loss of coolant and a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania. The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident due to inadequate training and human factors, such as human-computer interaction