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The risk which would be most dangerous is one where a loss of coolant accident happens and promotes a fuel meltdown, so that radioactive material could be ejected into the environment. This is effectively what happened at Chernobyl, but made worse by the steam explosion and then the graphite fire. This type of reactor has never and will never be built in the US, other nearby countries, or W Europe. PWR's and BWR's are made safe by very generous design margins on the primary circuit, and it is maintained by all design and licensing authorities that the probability of such disruptive failure is negligible, though difficult to put a number to. Something like 10-6 per reactor year is the design aim, ie a reactor would have to operate for a million years to have one such failure.

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Q: What is the risk involved in nuclear engineering?
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