In the mid 1970's a popular bumper sticker in the Northeastern States of the United States of America said, "Split wood not atoms."  This was the reaction by many to the efforts to build a nuclear power plant in upper New England.  The Increase use of wood fire for heating has caused greater pollution problems thus many communities have placed restrictions on the use of wood for heat.

The anti nuclear power thinking was not indigenous to New England States alone but was and apparently still is a very strong opinion held by people across the US.  Recent poles taken by CBS News and the New York Times indicated that about 51 percent of the people who responded approved of building new nuclear power plants but only 40 percent would approve of such a plant being built near their community.

The fear people have about nuclear power is not without foundation.  Uncontrolled atomic reaction can be very devastating with wide area and long term results.  The results of the bombs released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two are proof of the damage.

The fear of a nuclear power plant exploding is exaggerated and is based on the lack of understanding about how nuclear weapons work.  First to produce a nuclear weapon the fuel (uranium) must be refined much more than that used in a power plant reactor; then the uranium must be shaped in a sphere around a metal core and extreme pressure must be suddenly exerted equally over the surface of the whole sphere.  The fuel for the power plants are shaped like rods not balls and they are moved together very slowly.  So the possibility of an electrical power plant becoming an atom bomb is not a threat.

That is not to say there can not be an explosion in these plants.  On April 26, 1986 at 1:23 A.M. a (UTC+3) the Chernobyl Power Plant near Pripyat in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had an explosion in its number four reactor but the explosion was due to overheated steam; it was not a nuclear explosion.  The initial explosion, which resulted in two deaths, and the fire which followed sent highly radioactive fallout over a wide geographic area.  It is estimated that there was four hundred times more fall out from that incident then was released by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.