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Nuclear plants do not "blow up", at least not the ones that are built after Chernobyl. Please stop spreading FUD.

• geff82 7y ago
  Tell me about it and tell me why they seem to be no alternative.
• choeger 7y ago
  Fukushima did blow up. Saw it live on TV. In fact, anything that creates that much thermal energy in a pressurized environment has a chance to blow up. Fission is a pointless, dirty, expensive technology when it comes to power generation on Earth. It is also not that friendly to the environment once you consider the huge infrastructure you have to operate. But the worst thing is that it is not scalable. Think about exchanging all coal and gas power plants with nuclear reactors, consider the safety and proliferation issues and then tell me that PV with chemical storage is not much simpler solution.
  • vidarh 7y ago
    You can blow up a Chernobyl type nuclear plant a year and it'd still be better than coal. Until we've gotten rid of coal shutting down nuclear and delaying decommissioning of coal to take up the slack involves causing mass death. Coal is only 'acceptable' because the consequences are not as immediately visible. PV might well be a better option once we've shut down all fossil fuel plants but in the meantime shutting down nuclear is irresponsible and immoral if it delays decommissioning of other types of plants.
• jhayward 7y ago
  Why do you keep posting this lie? Chernobyl's unit 4 was destroyed by an explosion. Fukushima had multiple explosions that destroyed the upper levels of reactor buildings, and ruptured the containment of unit 2. During the three mile island accident there were several days where engineers were sweating bullets because there was a hydrogen gas bubble at the top of the pressure vessel, and they were afraid it would explode. It was only after about a week of effort that they were able to eliminate the H2 bubble. Every nuclear reactor has the possibility of immense damage due to explosion - steam explosions, explosive gas, and secondary systems such as diesel and electrical system. It is one of the primary hazards that control systems and emergency cooling and venting are there to deal with. Lying to everyone that it's not possible isn't helpful to the nuclear community.
  • Nimitz14 7y ago
    They do not blow up in the sense of a nuclear explosion. It's a normal explosion. With normal consequences.
    • jhayward 7y ago
      When you blow up a bunch of radioactive material in a large steam explosion you get widespread contamination from fallout and a massive cleanup necessary to recover the scattered material, as well as dealing with the melted core material. That's not "normal".
    • anoncake 7y ago
      They blow up in the sense of a dirty bomb. That's a lot worse. It would be great if NPPs just blew up in a nuclear explosion! We could safely use them by making the blast radius a forbidden zone.
      • Nimitz14 7y ago
        > They blow up in the sense of a dirty bomb. That's a lot worse. It would be great if NPPs just blew up in a nuclear explosion! We could safely use them by making the blast radius a forbidden zone. I do not know how to respond politely to such a ridiculous statement.
        • anoncake 7y ago
          Then please explain impolitely where you think I'm wrong. To clarify: “great” is no absolute, an NPP that generates electricity is obviously better than one that explodes. It also depends on the size of the explosion. A Hiroshima-class explosion would be acceptable, the one of a tsar bomb might not be. Also an NPP that fails like that would still kill its operators and perhaps some unlucky farmers. But compared to the actual worst case, that's negligible.
  • petre 7y ago
    They blow up just like a pressure cooker blows up. If we build an unpressurized reactor with unflammable coolant, nothing ever blows up.