Table 2.

Socio-economic impacts of severe accidents in nuclear power reactors

Accident	Type	Release of Cs-137 (TBq)	Evacuated	Estimated costs million US$
Three Mile Island 1979	Core melt	≪1	Voluntary short-term evacuation of nearby communities due to garbled information	~6500
Tjernobyl 1986	Runaway fission process destroying the reactor	85 000	>300 000 relocated	250 000–500 000
Fukushima 2011	Three cores severely damaged, probably melted	12 000	~150 000 evacuated, prospects to return still unclear after 20 months	100 000–500 000
Hypothetical severe accident with release mitigation according to present Swedish and Finnish requirements	Core melt	<200	Precautionary short-term evacuation in the vicinity of the plant?	<20 000?