Are Nuclear Power Plants Safe?

First of all, nuclear power is not the same as a nuclear or atomic bomb. A bomb is made to disperse radiation, a nuclear reactor is not.
Nuclear power has inherent danger, just as ALL sources of power and energy have. The very nature of stored power, whether stored water (dam) or stored electricity (battery) or nuclear power (reactor) can be dangerous. You can’t have something that provides power that doesn’t produce some risk. More people have died due to broken dams than due to nuclear power plants. The Johnstown Flood of 1889 in Pennsylvania killed 2,200 people. How many died from Chernobyl? Not anywhere near that many and the radiation levels around Chernobyl are fading faster than expected.
The radiation left behind by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII was supposed to cause birth defects and sterile soil for hundreds of years, yet those two cities were rebuilt and the horrible predictions never materialized – thank God. The panic and hysteria about nuclear power is unjustified and exaggerated. Why? Because it makes fascinating news stories, which in turn sell advertising, and advertising makes a fatter paycheck for the “news” media.
I ordered some potassium iodide (KI – haven’t received it yet), but after reading about and thinking about the Japanese nuclear power plants and how hard the Japanese are working to secure the sites, and realizing the great distance between Japan and my home near the California coast, plus watching the real-time radiation levels in this country which are available online, I realized I wasted my money on the KI. Even if radiation finds its way here, I’m not worried about the levels. The earth has a very good way of dealing with poisons – it absorbs, flushes, and/or neutralizes them. Dentists receive greater doses of radiation than just about anybody else, but there is no shortage of dentists. So let’s not buy into the hype, may cooler heads prevail.
Nuclear power isn’t the problem, the fear-mongers in Washington, DC are. They are always the biggest problems.
And I echo what OhioPrepper said, there are thousands of dead Japanese from the earthquake and tsunami, and so far nobody is dead from the radiation. I expect it will remain that way.
TNBob, I don’t know where you got your figures for the magnitude of earthquakes on the San Andreas fault, but I can attest to the fact that it’s not the only faultline in this state, and the San Francisco quake of 1906 was on the San Andreas fault and it was estimated to be 8.1. I have personally experienced tremors here that were 7.1 and southern California has had some of similar strength. Both Diablo Canyon Power Plant (on the coast) and Rancho Seco (on the coast) have experienced major earthquakes and withstood them without trouble. The nuclear power plants here have very high tsunami barricades in place and the plant structures are different shapes than those in Japan, and therefore better able to withstand quakes and massive waves.
I’m embarrassed when I realize I became a sheeple for a moment, when I ordered the KI. The news media creates sheeple, so keep that in mind the next time the media wants to fatten its bottom line at our expense. Think, question, use reason, don’t fall for the hype as I did.