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. No cities would be destroyed if plant containment is breached. 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. The term "nuclear meltdown" has become synonymous with worst-case scenarios. 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 ⦠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. "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 2007, 14% of the world's electricity came from nuclear power, despite concerns about safety and radioactive waste management. Generating plants have very low grade material. In the early morning of April 24, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded during a routine maintenance check. Electric utility reactors heat water to produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity. 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.. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. If a nuclear power plant exploded, would it be similar to that of an atomic bomb? Nuclear power is power (generally electrical) produced from controlled (i.e., non-explosive) nuclear fission reactions. To help the world understand what might happen if a nuclear weapon exploded, Wellerstein created an interactive browser app called Nukemap. 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. Indeed, as nuclear power plants can't produce a Hiroshima-style nuclear detonation, a meltdown is about as bad as it gets. 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? The Chernobyl comparison is not appropriate. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture. Nuclear plant cores do not explode like nuclear bombs. It was a very old graphite reactor with no containment vessel. 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