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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear plants certainly do "explode" when things when wrong. I assume you used scare quotes because you were thinking of a nuclear detonation, but there was plenty of damage done by the non-nuclear explosions at Chernobyl and Fukushima, to cite the most famous examples.

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You are right that there are explosions, but it isn't an explosion like an atomic bomb. You understand the difference, but unfortunately there is a fundamental misunderstanding for the general public that a reactor could function like a bomb. There just isn't the energy density to do that.

There was physical damage to structures at Fukushima but that didn't cause any real damage outside the plant or releases. The releases were leaks elsewhere (which were still not huge compared to natural radiation levels).

Chernobyl was due to a reactor literally geared for instability (search rbmk void fraction for details) in the Soviet union. It had no containment around the reactor. So a basic structure around the reactor would crumble with an explosion. But it wouldn't contain that much regardless since it wasn't designed to, and they frankly were arrogant and didn't care much about safety precautions.

As to the plenty of damage from Chernobyl, here's the facts: it has been highly studied over almost 30 years, it is a nature preserve, people who refused to evacuate still live there healthily, and they still operate a reactor on that site. Here's an article which examined and summarized the largest and most reputable medical studies on the Chernobyl aftermath. I was genuinely surprised myself. http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2012/05/things-wo...

Actually Chernobyl was (partially) a nuclear explosion. Lots of misunderstanding about this, even among nuclear engineers.

Go on, my understanding is that the "explosion" was basically a steam pressure explosion which blew the top off of the reactor, if that is incorrect do you have a reasonably easy to understand source?

There were two explosions - first was a steam explosion followed 2 or 3 seconds later by another more powerful explosion - with the cause of the latter still being debated. However, one theory does describe it as follows:

"However, the sheer force of the second explosion, and the ratio of xenon radioisotopes released during the event, indicate that the second explosion could have been a nuclear power transient; the result of the melting core material, in the absence of its cladding, water coolant and moderator, undergoing runaway prompt criticality similar to the explosion of a fizzled nuclear weapon."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_a...

NB I'm in the process of reading *"Atomic Accidents - A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: from the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima" - but I haven't got to Chernobyl yet....

http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-M...

Arnie Gunderson from Fairewinds makes the case that the explosion in fuel pool of Unit 3 at Fukushima was a detonation (faster than the speed of sound) and not a deflagration (speed of sound). A plausible reason was a initial hydrogen explosion in the pool distorted the fuel and initiated a moderated prompt criticality. http://www.fairewinds.org/gundersen-postulates-unit-3-explos...

"It is not a bomb. A bomb is a prompt fast criticality." http://www.fairewinds.org/fukushima-daiichi-the-truth-and-th...

In the 50s the US did an open air experiment called Borax - Safety Experiment on a Boiling Water Reactor, where they blew up a reactor. http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/p/videos-moderated-prom...

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