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The Chernobyl power plant did not have a containment building around the reactors until after the meltdown. Every Western nuclear power plant has a containment
by philwelch 4y ago
The Chernobyl power plant did not have a containment building around the reactors until after the meltdown. Every Western nuclear power plant has a containment building around the reactors. That's the single biggest factor.
- ncmncm 4y agoTMI and Fukushima had containment, for all the good it did.
- Vecr 4y agoIt did a lot of good? TMI slagged the core but the containment held, and Fukushima's cores (the ones that melted, obviously) was still mostly covered, the hydrogen explosion was the major problem.
- ncmncm 4y agoTMI vented a very large amount of radioactive krypton. (Given its density, it would better be described as dumped to the river, where it spread out along the banks downstream, gassing riverfront neighborhoods.) Fukushima's containment exploded in hydrogen detonations, and vented a great deal of radioisotopes. They are today flushing tritium to the ocean, which seems wasteful; we will want the 3He that decays to.