From the Bulletin Archives: Containment of a reactor meltdown

From the Bulletin Archives: Containment of a reactor meltdown

from It is 6 Minutes to Midnight | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists by Frank von Hippel

Any good scientist or engineer believes implicitly in Murphy's law: "If something can go wrong, sooner or later it will go wrong." The US Atomic Energy Commission, which until 1975 had the responsibility for ensuring the safety of US civilian power reactors, had many good scientists and engineers involved in its work. And during its history it repeatedly considered the consequences of all the safety systems in a nuclear reactor failing, the fuel melting and the volatile radioactive isotopes in the fuel being released to the atmosphere.