WHAT TO DO TO MAKE NUKE PLANTS SAFER

In the early days of nuclear power, the nuclear cores were supposed to be designed so that if they expanded due to excessive heating (if the cooling system failed, for example) that the core would expand enough to cause fission activity to reduce so that a stable condition would occur even without cooling. Also, there were supposed to be enough boron control rods to slam home into the core to dampen the core below criticality and stop significant neutron density to cool the reactor in case of a cooling system failure or some other condition that might result in an out-of-control situation. But for economic reasons, corners were cut so that it became necessary to maintain cooling system operation no matter what happens. But as we have seen, things can go wrong with the cooling system and then the core is in major danger of a total out-of-control heating that could result in what is referred to as a "meltdown". We are now seeing this possibility in Japan with already serious consequences. Another error is to store fuel rods in water pools long term right adjacent to or above the core of the reactor so if the pool is dried up by an overheating reactor core and not refilled we have another meltdown possibility for the stored fuel rods. There are a lot of possibilities for improvements at nuke plants. For one thing they should not be sited on earthquake fault lands. One thing I think would help is to place self-destruct high explosive charges below the nuclear core and even the storage pools, that would automatically detonate in the event of the detection of over-heating of the core or the pool and failure of the cooling systems. This is of course an extreme thing happen as the last ditch defense, but it would disperse the fuel elements quickly and definitely stop the fission reactions and the possiblity of a meltdown, protecting the environment from radioactive cesium and iodine contamination. The only problems left would be to clean up fuel materials and debri and of course close the plant. I have proposed this solution to the Whitehouse and a noted scientist who I will not name, but I received no reply and of course there has been no suggestions of action in this direction or any other action, just talk, to improve the safety of nuclear power plants.