[burnte]

> How safe are the other reactor designs when malicious human intervention is considered is still a very open question.

Nothing is safe from malicious action, absolutely nothing. You can cut someone with a piece of paper, drown them with a glass of water, or stab them in the throat with a pencil. You can even simply punch someone with your hand in the back of the neck and kill them. We simply make malicious action difficult and unlikely through design and rules, exactly how we manage cars and coal plants and nuclear weapons.

[varjag]

Exactly. And I think we all can agree that a sharp pencil does not have the same worst case scenario potential as an automatic rifle or nuclear weapon. It is really hard to sabotage a coal plant with the same national impact as an INES L7 nuclear accident. I think among the "conventional" energy sources only some of the hydro sites come close.