A Nuclear Plant Melting Down: We Still Don't Understand How Disruptive That Would Be?

I contend we would automatically default into a full scale nation wide panic if a nuclear plant melted down, the least of which, would be this would force all our nuclear plants to be withdrawn from the grid. It would be a much wider catastrophe than Fukushima. Fukushima shut down all their plants  \with their meltdown. Only six have been returned in Japan considering they had 50 plants. At best, we would get back six plants in the same ways. You know, the pertinent  questions everyone would ask, why didn't Fukushima fix our nuclear plants.    

U.S. nuclear regulators do not recognize real danger of dirty bombs, says watchdog

Besides killing people with radiation, a dirty bomb would spread panic, prompt evacuations, require clean-up and undermine the economy, says a new report.

April 4, 2019, 11:00 AM EDT

By Dan De Luce

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is failing to recognize the full range of dangers posed by a potential dirty bomb attack and needs to take more action to secure high-risk radioactive material, according to a government watchdog report released Thursday.

In assessing the possible effect of a radioactive dirty bomb detonated in an American city, the U.S. nuclear regulator has only focused on the possible health effects caused by the spread of radiation, the Government Accountability Office report said. But the NRC has not taken into account the potential consequences of a panic-driven evacuation and costly decontamination effort, according to the report.

"NRC's regulatory approach in many ways is based on the idea that a dirty bomb would not be a high consequence event," said David Trimble, director of the National Resources and Environment office at the GAO.

"Their view of what the risk is is very circumscribed, it's very narrow."

A dirty bomb uses a conventional explosive combined with radioactive material to spread radiation over a wider area, and some terrorist groups have sought to construct such a device over the years.

Rather than deaths or harm caused by radiation, the most significant impact of a radioactive dirty bomb would be its disruptive effect, by spreading panic, prompting evacuations, requiring clean-up work and undermining economic activity, said the report, citing experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences as well as other studies.

A chaotic evacuation could cause more deaths than any radiation released in an attack, and the results of the disruption and contamination could cause billions of dollars in damage, the report said...