Pandora's Atomic Box Score: On the Nuclear Industry's Total Meltdown

[PamW]

2. The strawman lives...

From above:
For decades the nuclear industry said zero commercial reactors could explode. When Chernobyl blew, they blamed it on the Soviet design. Now, three General Electric reactors have exploded at Fukushima.

The strawman fallacy lives. First MISQUOTE the opposition, and then attack.

The nuclear industry was attempting to allay the fears of people who thought that reactors could explode like atomic bombs.

It was the full-scale nuclear explosion that was said to be impossible; and that is true.

Even Chernobyl, which was a BAD design; was NOT a full-scale Hiroshima / Nagasaki nuclear explosion. For goodness sakes; the BUILDING is still there. Do you not think that a full-scale nuclear explosion wouldn't level the whole building like it levelled the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The Fukushima explosions were NOT nuclear explosions either. When zirconium, a component of the core; overheats in the presence of water; it oxidizes. The zirconium grabs the oxygen atom away from the water molecule and that leaves a molecule of hydrogen, H2 behind. It was the build-up of hydrogen in a building with free oxygen in air; that resulted in an explosive mixture yielding the chemical explosions seen.

I always judge the credibility of a claim by the degree the claimant has to distort the truth in order to make the point.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW