The world under the events and nuclear accidents of the xx century. Facts and numbers

Abstract

The situations that we will deal with in this article have come as a result of the balance disruption of the natural resources on the planet and have brought great risks such as: the release of industrial gases, pollution from nuclear accidents, pandemics from viruses of scientific laboratories, but also from the human hand. In 1939, a group of physicists in the US learned about the demonstration of experiments by German scientists on the fission of nuclei of transuranic chemical elements of large atomic weight. Some of these scientists predicted that the energy which would be released during fission could be harnessed in terrifyingly unimaginable explosive weapons. On July 26, 1945, the specialist mechanics began assembling the bomb called ‘Little Boy’. Hiroshima became the primary target because of its military value, as the city served as the headquarters of the Japanese military, and because the planners believed that the compactness of the urban centre would clearly prove the destructive power of the bomb. Hiroshima became the first city in the world that was hit by an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Nagasaki, the capital and also the largest city of Nagasaki-ken prefecture in western Kyushu, Japan was hit by a bomb with an explosive force of 21,000 tons of tritol. About 40,000 people were killed instantly and at least 30,000 more would be seriously injured by burns caused by ionizing radiation. The accident occurred at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on April 26, 1986, where as a result of the explosion of unit number 4, significant amounts of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. The distribution was favoured by the atmospheric conditions of those days, bringing as a result the pollution of large areas in Europe and elsewhere, also affecting the north-eastern surface of the Albanian territory. The Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent accident of the nuclear power plant had serious and long-term effects on people living near the Fukushima nuclear plant. The explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant came as a surprise, even for many people who lived nearby, as they were faced with an extraordinary situation, panicking for months after the accident. The explosions and spread of nuclear material caused even stronger anxiety among people who were terrified by the earthquake and tsunami. The messages received from these situations should be presented as a summary of basic understandings supported by scientific, historical, administrative, monitoring and mathematical data for the best possible understanding of the role that human society itself should play in the function of preserving and protecting our planet – the Earth.