What is the significance of the Chernobyl incident in terms of the viability of nuclear power as a safe means of energy?
A. It is obvious that this unfortunate accident demonstrates, once again, how volatile and potentially dangerous is our present (fission) method of using nuclear energy. Significantly, the Russian scientists involved have said that the explosion and subsequent overheating of the fission rod occurred in a way which could not have been predicted from current scientific knowledge. If this is true, therefore, the same dangerous situation may well exist in every nuclear plant in the world. That being so, there is only one answer to the problem: the closing down of all nuclear plants and the abandonment of the current fission method of extracting energy from the atom.
