Sanautock incident

The Sanautock incident, also known as the Sanautock nuclear incident or Sanautock meltdown, was a of reactor number 3 at the Sanautock Atomkraftverk (SAK-3) nuclear facility in Sanautock, Coranelle on the 18th of July, 1972. The subsequent radioactive leak which occurred led to the incident being listed as an "accident with wider consequences" and is considered the most significant nuclear accident in Coranellan and Vatupayic history. On the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale, the Sanautock incident was labeled as a 5.

The incident commenced with numerous failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open in the primary system. Because of this, large amounts of, additionally, the mechanical failures were compounded by initial failure of the operators of the plant to diagnose the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident due to inadequate training and poor interface of plant equipment, such as human–computer interaction design oversights with ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant's user interface. For example, a hidden indicator light led to an operator manually overriding the automatic emergency cooling system of the reactor because the operator mistakenly believed that there was too much coolant water present in the reactor, leading to the steam pressure release.

The accident raised anti-nuclear concerns among activists and the general public and resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry. It has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program in the region, a slowdown that was already underway in the 1960s. The public reaction to the disaster was worldwide, and assisted in the shutdown of experimental nuclear power sites as far as Ventora and Velorenkya. The partial meltdown resulted in the release of radioactive gases and iodine into the environment. Additionally, the meltdown is said to symbolize the humbling of Coranelle's ambitions, bringing an end to the technological revolution the nation saw from the 1960s through the early 1970s. The power plant was subsequently abandoned following the incident, however the terminal remains a museum accredited to Coranelle's dangerous ambitions following the Second World War, as well as serving a lesson that "sometimes, you can dream too big".