A6 Accidents in Naval Reactors

Topic

In addition to civil power reactors, those used to propel submarines and other military vessels also experienced significant accidents, generally linked to the specific conditions of operating in a confined space. The 1961 accident involving the K-19 submarine reactor was a failure of the very cooling system described in the models in this section; it forced the crew to carry out improvised emergency repairs to prevent a core meltdown, thereby exposing the personnel involved to significant levels of radiation.

The 1968 accident involving the K-27 submarine reactor was a cooling failure in a reactor that used liquid metal as a coolant—the same design choice described in the core cooling model—and resulted in core damage and radiation exposure for some of the crew. The 1985 accident involving the K-431 submarine reactor, which occurred during a refueling operation in port, was instead caused by a sudden, uncontrolled surge in reactivity—the same phenomenon described in the second model in this catalog—triggering an explosion and the release of radioactive material, with fatal consequences for some of the personnel present.

Thus, this module—which begins by addressing an operational context distinct from that of civil power plants, involving the specific crews, conditions, and considerations of the naval and military environment—concludes by demonstrating that none of these three accidents introduced a new failure mechanism. Whether it was a loss of cooling or uncontrolled reactivity during refueling, each instance involved the same mechanism previously described in this catalog for civil power plants, occurring in this case within the confined space of a vessel.

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