Quote Originally Posted by twilyth View Post
Dave, please take a look at this - pebble bed reactors

These are gas cooled and CANNOT melt down. You're thinking of the ancient designs used in current reactors where you have fuel rods and control rods and a very complex liquid cooling system that can malfunction if not maintained properly. The only issue with pebble beds is if you have a damaged pebbles - but that will cause a minor release of radiation at most. It will not and cannot cause a melt down.

Building a water cooled reactor when you could build one of these instead is just stupid. If someone wanted to build a pebble bed reactor in my area, I wouldn't object. If they tried to build a water cooled, control rod style reactor, I would be out there chaining myself to bulldozers.
Twiliyt the pebble reactors are not 100% safe. HUMAN error is the No. 1 risk to all nuclear. Just like it was with every accident. Human error.

Dave@ Chernobyle was a baby accident compared to what almost happened there. Due to the selfless sacrifice of 2 navy divers, they prevented a Thermo Vapor explosion of 1000's of gallojns of flooded water that estimates had written would poison all of europe and kill 30million. Nuclear is great.... until one of these countries goes to war... and Power stations get sabotaged by lunatics.