Chernobyl Disaster

In Ukrain during 1986 the city of Chernobyl was devistated by a huge nuclear melt down. It was caused by inexperienced employs operating a nuclear reactor.This caused the reactor to release radiation from its core, the night of the accident two of the workers died instantly. After two weeks have passed a total of 28 people have died from the radiation poisoning, and they had to evacuate the entire city after this. But it did not stop there 19 more people died after they left the city due to the radiation already being in their body. Even to this day the city is still highly radioactive and will kill anything that tries to live there. Source http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident/

Nuclear Bomb Reactions

Now a nuclear power plant cant just up and explode killing thousands. They are much different than what goes into the process of the Nuclear Bomb. The way the bombs work is they take a large piece of uranium or plutonium and use fission to turn them into small fragments, that causes the reaction of the huge explosion. But the bombs are very compact so when the neutrons fly around they do not have to go far to hit another fissionable atom. So a nuclear power plant is way to big for all of those reactions to take place. source http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

Nuclear Waste

After the fuel in the nuclear reactor has been there for about 18 months much of the uranium has left it, and much of the fission built up in the solution. Then the reactor is refueled by putting back in 1/3 of the fuel rods. Fuel rods are a great build up of highly radioactive waste left over from the nuclear reactor. The rods are then placed in huge pools and left to cool down, the longer they rest the highly reactive isotopes die and the rods become cool. After the rods are processed to remove and plutonium or uranium that still remains. This process take about two months, but most of the buyers of nuclear energy are coming up with faster ways to refuel. For example in Louisiana the operator of American nuclear power plants has brought the time down to 17 days. But at the end there is still waste left over, which the US sotres in Nevada. source http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html