[all_usernames]

HN readers love to opine on how "safe" nuclear is so I have my popcorn ready for this thread

> the lab was the location of one of the nation's largest — and least known — nuclear accidents that occurred 1959 when one of the facility's ten sodium nuclear reactors experienced a partial meltdown, releasing enormous amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment.

[credit_guy]

If you still have the popcorn handy, here’s other stuff they did with Uranium in the ‘50s. Atomic energy science kits for kids

  https://spectrum.ieee.org/fun-and-uranium-for-the-whole-family-in-this-1950s-science-kit

Now, after you enjoyed the fun and the popcorn, I might point out that we are not in the 1950s anymore.

The safety of nuclear energy is something regulated by the NRC. I have never heard anyone accusing the NRC for being lax.

Here’s a link with the NRC approval of NuScale’s SMR reactor

  https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale.html

If you browse through those links you will find out the approval consists in a few thousand pages. Only the requests for additional information form a list of 149 pages, at about 10-20 requests per page

https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-file...

A very conservative estimate would put the regulatory effort at a few hundred thousand man-hours of work, and the work on NuScale’s side to be in the millions of man-hours.

[jtsiskin]

“In 2002, a Department of Energy (DOE) official described typical waste disposal procedures used by Field Lab employees in the past. Workers would dispose of barrels filled with radioactive sodium by dumping them in a pond and then shooting the barrels with rifles so that they would explode and release their contents into the air.[29] Since, the pit has been remediated by having 22,000 cubic yards of soil removed down 10-12 feet to bedrock.[29]

On 26 July 1994, two scientists, Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning in open pits exploded. “

… I think there’s more here than just the reactor meltdown.

And also, this was in 1959. Compare that to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springhill_mining_disasters. “Safe” is relative