On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 19:11:28 -0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article , Bruce Farquhar
wrote:

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 18:52:33 -0000, dpb wrote:

On 12/10/2018 12:44 PM, Bruce Farquhar wrote:
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 18:36:44 -0000, dpb wrote:

On 12/10/2018 9:42 AM, Bruce Farquhar wrote:
...

Agreed, all I'm saying is they do go wrong.

But _NO_ commercial reactors have "exploded" from the fuel having had an
uncontrolled chain reaction.

Chernobyl was so destructive because the Russky's didn't build a
containment structure to save $$ and so the fire melted the housing
structure (essentially just a "Butler building") and thus let the smoke
plume disperse the gaseous and light fission products. But, it was a
conventional fire, not a nuclear explosion that was the event.

Would a nuclear explosion have been a lot worse? Twice as bad? 50
million times as bad? Would it be similar to a nuclear weapon? Or is
there a big difference in yield?

Of course it would have been, but it's pointless to speculate because
commercial reactor design is such that a supercritical mass required to
have a weapons-type reaction is simply physically impossible to occur.

What is the difficulty and the cause of reactor damage at TMI and
Fukushima is loss of effective core cooling and subsequent fuel cladding
failures or fuel melt. But, it's still not an uncontrolled nuclear
reaction event.

The most dangerous situation at TMI by far was making one's way thru the
crowd of reporters jamming cameras and microphones in your face on the
way to/from the gate at shift change...

Indeed. Reporters should be outlawed, poking their noses into
everything and making **** up.

Whooooosh !

Then make yourself more clear.