Small reactors often don’t actually have enough fuel to actually melt their containment. And I’m talking Small Modular Reactors in the low MW range.
These pellets would be basically immune to anything even resembling a meltdown unless you had hundreds of them in one space.
No, the risk when dealing with items this small is orphan source. i.e. the loss of a pellet into the wider world.
Orphan source accidents are terrifying but also of very small scale. Usually one or two people who don’t know what they’ve found and lose body parts to it, or just die.
Orphan sources are almost always from improperly disposed of medical equipment. Including the single worst case I can think of.
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That was horrifying and so sad to watch. It also made me realise that most of us probably don’t know enough about identifying nuclear contaminants.
I feel like even if we think we know of nuclear contaminants, identifying it and procedures on what to do in these situations should really be compulsory education for everyone.
The worst part about that was that after exposure, it really seemed like a best case scenario. From what the video showed, it was identified about as quickly as you could hope, and authorities responded well. It’s it we’re missed or they didn’t respond like they did, it could have been much, much worse.
On the other hand, the people who knew there was an orphaned source and delayed recovering it for so long, apought to be in jail
I wouldn’t mind a more knowledgeable population when it comes to nuclear physics.
If treated with respect, it’s the safest, and best tool we have to power our future.
Instead, we get a weird mix of fearmongering and ignorance that actually makes us all less safe.
