Nuclear Power Safety Risks
Frontline: Even in the worst case, a nuclear meltdown would not release any radiation outside the containment building.
Response: This is simply untrue. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recognizes the possibility of so-called "beyond-design-basis" ("Class 9") accidents in which steam or hydrogen explosions caused by molten fuel interacting with water could rupture the containment building and cause large radiation releases. Also, France's standardized nuclear plant design, praised by Frontline, is vulnerable to "common mode failures." A serious accident caused by a design defect in one plant could force a shutdown of all other plants of the same type and leave France with a greatly reduced capacity to generate three-quarters of its electricity. The French nuclear industry's recent large-scale distribution of potassium iodide tablets to populations around its nuclear plants---a means to reduce thyroid-cancer risk in the event of a large radiation release---went unreported by Frontline but indicates that France's confidence in its own "fail-safe" safety measures is somewhat less than total.
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