satellite plutonium-238

 Charles Perrow, Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies, 1999 [ ]

p.260

The third was in a navigational satellite sent up in 1964 that failed to achieve orbit when its rocket engine failed. It reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean and distributed 1 kilogram of plutonium-238 about the earth. By 1970 it was estimated that about 95 percent of it had settled on the ground or the earth's waters. The accident was estimated to produce a three-fold increase over the amount of plutonium contamination produced by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.5  This received almost no publicity, in contrast to the breakup of a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite in 1978 and another one in 1983.  The first public mention of it may have been in a 1967 item in the journal Science.6 

   ( Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies / Charles Perrow, 1. industrial accidents., 2. technology--risk assessment., 3. accident., HD7262  P55  1999, 363.1--dc21, 1999,  )

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