Jophiel wrote:
Samira wrote:
(what's a smelter?)
An oven used to melt down metals and minerals to seperate them from any impurities.
I'm not sure what one does at a nuclear power plant since I'd think they'd process the fuel elsewhere and not just ship over big chunks of rock with uranium in it to the plant directly.
Yeah. Kinda my thought as well. A smelter isn't involved in any way that I can think of in the actual operation of a nuclear power plant. But presumably would be used in the generation of the nuclear pellots used to power said plant.
I suppose they could do the purification on the same batch of land where they have the plant itself. Nothing says you have to do them in different locations. But an explosion in a smelter would not (or should not!) have any effect on the plants operation directly, and certainly would not involve any sort of meltdown or large scale accident.
IIRC, when Chernobl happened, they couldn't exactly hide the radiation leak. It was detected all over the globe pretty much immediately. So if there is more then they're saying, it's still got to be pretty minor.