Vandellòs I turbine fire
A non-nuclear fire that came close to mattering: it destroyed enough cabling and cooling to degrade the reactor's safety systems, and the plant never restarted.
| Date | 1989-10-19 |
|---|---|
| INES rating | 3 Serious incident |
| Facility | power reactor |
| Unit | Vandellos nuclear power plant 1 |
| Reactor type | Gas-cooled reactor (GCR) |
| Country | Spain |
| Deaths at the time | 0 |
|---|---|
| Acute radiation deaths | not established |
No deaths or injuries, and no radiological release.
A turbine blade failure started a fire in the turbine hall that damaged cabling and progressively disabled several safety systems.
What happened
A blade failed in one of the turbines, which started a substantial fire in the turbine hall. The fire damaged cable runs, and flooding from firefighting disabled equipment, progressively removing redundant cooling and safety trains.
No radioactivity was released. But the sequence eroded defence in depth in a way that made the margin uncomfortably thin.
Consequences
The regulator required extensive upgrades. The operator judged them uneconomic and shut the plant permanently.
What changed afterwards
Vandellòs is the standard case study for fire as a common-cause failure. A fire is not a nuclear event, but it can take out redundant systems simultaneously because their cables often share routes. Fire protection and cable separation requirements at plants worldwide trace to this accident and to the 1975 Browns Ferry fire in the United States.
Other accidents
| Accident | INES | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Chernobyl | 7 | 1986-04-26 |
| Fukushima Daiichi | 7 | 2011-03-11 |
| Kyshtym (Mayak) | 6 | 1957-09-29 |
| Windscale Pile 1 fire | 5 | 1957-10-10 |
| Three Mile Island Unit 2 | 5 | 1979-03-28 |
| SL-1 | 4 | 1961-01-03 |
| Saint-Laurent A2 fuel melt | 4 | 1980-03-13 |
| Tokaimura criticality accident | 4 | 1999-09-30 |
| Davis-Besse vessel head corrosion | 3 | 2002-03-06 |
Sources
- IAEA INES documentation · retrieved 2026-09-07