The problem with nuclear energy is that a nuclear power plant isn't very different in concept from a nuclear bomb. Getting the latter from the former is a serious concern. Having the former accidentally turn into a dirty nuke (not a lot of force, but lots of fallout), is scarily easy. Just see 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl.
It is very different. You can't just make an atom bomb out of what's available at a nuclear plant. They're entirely different concepts requiting diffrrent materials.
Chernobyl was an outdated design known to be dangerous at the time it was made, and something like the Chernobyl incident can't happen on anything newer. A study found statistically insignificant rises in cancer rates from the 3 Mile incident.
I recommend the book Atomic Accidents, it's very informative and I believe it went over specifically why a nuclear plant can't just explode like an atom bomb or even really help you make one.
I think it's worthwhile to differentiate between a critical mass fission/fusion bomb and a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb can be made from anything radioactive coupled with a conventional explosive, since the goal is just to spread the radioactive material as widely as possible. Fission/fusion bombs (what we typically would consider as "atomic bombs") are, as you said, way harder to pull off. The general public definitely likes to conflate the two.
No, your average nuclear plant doesn't have the makings of an atom bomb. But countries that are running nuclear power plants have an obvious incentive to create enrichment facilities for their nuclear power. These facilities are similar to those that enrich further for a nuclear bomb. Several countries have achieved nuclear bombs this way.
Furthermore nuclear plants do not all work the same way. There are advocates of thorium nuclear plants, because thorium is a much more abundant fuel source that should be able to operate more cleanly than uranium. However those plants generate uranium-233 which can be potentially separated through chemical processes in plants that are a lot easier to hide than centrifuges used for enrichment.
Both ways, nuclear power can be a step on the way to nuclear proliferation.
The fact that you would reference TMI in reference to dirty bombs is extremely telling in that you have no idea what you're talking about. The average radiation exposure outside TMI compound was less that an airplane flight or x-ray. Bananas are literally more dangerous.
Regardless of which version of the facts you consider more believable, the public was scared witless of the possibility that there was an exposure. As a result millions of people were left with the concern that they could get cancer decades down the road. This public fear is also the most important impact of a dirty nuclear bomb used as a terrorist weapon. Very few of people will get sick, and fewer still will die. But lots will be scared.
> Regardless of which version of the facts you consider more believable,
Believable has nothing to do with it. An average dose of worst case 1000 times higher, 1.4 REM, doesn't even violate the US federal annual dose limits. Attempting to equivocate this with dirty bombs is either ignorant or a malicious, inflammatory lie to generate fear for an ulterior motive.
If you're trying to insinuate some kind of cover-up, the did a pretty terrible job because no new reactors came online after TMI for like 50 years.
Perhaps someone dropped a banana. The average exposure was 8 millirem (equivalent to a chest X-ray), and the peak outside the facility was 100 millirem (average annual exposure).
