>I'm not claiming to have the definite answer. I just don't understand where people like you are taking their confidence from.
I get my confidence from my understanding of nuclear energy. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but if your even remotely technically inclined(or just make an effort to understand) the basics are not hard to learn.
Most people think it's beyond their ability to understand how nuclear works so they don't even try, it might as well be black magic to them. It's then really easy to scare them with nuclear horror stories, and no amount of facts can undo that because they haven't got the fundamentals to understand those facts.
Did you know that in 1957 there was a fire in a military nuclear reactor in the UK burning for 2 days before it was shut down? Much of this burned nuclear material was passing almost freely into the atmosphere with not a single dangerous dose of radiation.
Or in another accident in 1961 three operators were killed(not by radiation), one of which was stuck to the ceiling with debris from the initial explosion. The rescue team used meat hooks on sticks to retrieve the body(in parts), being able to spend less than 57 seconds in the area. The bodies were so radioactive that they had to be berried in lead caskets.
I'm not a nuclear scientist, but if your even remotely technically inclined(or just make an effort to understand) the basics are not hard to learn.
Oh, I think I do have a basic grasp.
However, I'm not sure how your two stories relate to either Chernobyl or a potential meltdown in Japan at all.
Are you trying to suggest that nuke plants are inherently harmless, because even fires can burn in them for 2 days without anything bad happening?
I guess it boils down to that I have a different understanding of the risks of nuclear plants - physics aside. People like you (sorry for generalizing) repeatedly claim that a meltdown is a normal and planned failure-mode. The core melts, the containment catches the radioactive blob, it cools down, all is well.
This sounds nice in theory. My problem is that it doesn't jibe at all with what we hear from japan these days. It doesn't sound like they're following a boring disaster-plan. It sounds more like they're pretty much in panic-mode. But perhaps this is just the media-spin, we'll know in a few weeks...
I get my confidence from my understanding of nuclear energy. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but if your even remotely technically inclined(or just make an effort to understand) the basics are not hard to learn.
Most people think it's beyond their ability to understand how nuclear works so they don't even try, it might as well be black magic to them. It's then really easy to scare them with nuclear horror stories, and no amount of facts can undo that because they haven't got the fundamentals to understand those facts.
Did you know that in 1957 there was a fire in a military nuclear reactor in the UK burning for 2 days before it was shut down? Much of this burned nuclear material was passing almost freely into the atmosphere with not a single dangerous dose of radiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
Or in another accident in 1961 three operators were killed(not by radiation), one of which was stuck to the ceiling with debris from the initial explosion. The rescue team used meat hooks on sticks to retrieve the body(in parts), being able to spend less than 57 seconds in the area. The bodies were so radioactive that they had to be berried in lead caskets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1