Here in the US, we like to think that our nuclear weapons exist to prevent our enemies from detonating a nuclear explosion on US soil â that is, when we think about them at all. Electric utility reactors heat water to produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity. The Chernobyl comparison is not appropriate. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture. Indeed, as nuclear power plants can't produce a Hiroshima-style nuclear detonation, a meltdown is about as bad as it gets. This is true whether you're talking about your boss' figurative meltdown in the office or the very real concerns surrounding such events as the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.. Bombs have highly refined and very condensed nuclear material. The explosions and nuclear fuel rods melting at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, following the Sendai earthquake and tsunami last week, have caused fears of what will happen ⦠Valery Legasov, the chief of the commission tasked with investigating the disaster, takes part in the trial of three power plant officials responsible for the explosion and its immediate aftermath. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. [1] Despite the evacuation order being released, health records of ex-workers at the plant are displaying quite a causal relationship between the disaster and cancer. The reality is somewhere in between," he wrote. The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl a nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators b. Sources: https://sites.google.com/view/sourcesallthebombs/What happens if we make a huge pile from all 15,000 nuclear bombs and pull the trigger? To this day, the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster is considered one of the worst disasters in the nuclear power generations history. If a nuclear power plant exploded, would it be similar to that of an atomic bomb? The term "nuclear meltdown" has become synonymous with worst-case scenarios. "Some people think [nuclear bombs] destroy everything in the world all [at] once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. In the early morning of April 24, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded during a routine maintenance check. Nuclear plant cores do not explode like nuclear bombs. To help the world understand what might happen if a nuclear weapon exploded, Wellerstein created an interactive browser app called Nukemap. Nope! In 2007, 14% of the world's electricity came from nuclear power, despite concerns about safety and radioactive waste management. Nuclear power is power (generally electrical) produced from controlled (i.e., non-explosive) nuclear fission reactions. It was a very old graphite reactor with no containment vessel. Built in the late 1970s about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine, the Chernobyl plant was one of the largest and oldest nuclear power plants in the world. No cities would be destroyed if plant containment is breached. On April 25 and 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history unfolded in what is now northern Ukraine as a reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded and burned. Generating plants have very low grade material. , a meltdown is about as bad as it gets is breached safety.. The reality is somewhere in between, '' he wrote nuclear bombs pull! 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