e posed by any other . Meltdowns, cancer , radiation , mutations and eventually death are all possible end results of the building of a nuclear power plant . Meltdown or the explosion of the main reactor itself can release tons of radioactive particles into the atmosphere . The meltdown of a nuclear power plant would release a thousand times more radioactivity into theatmosphere than the bombs dropped on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Another possibility is "China Syndrome " , where the core of the reactor melts into the earth and reaches the water table of the area and contaminates it . Although Nuclear power plants do not give off any form of combustion , they do release minute traces of radioactive particles which contaminate the soil , water and air . They also release super heated water into lakes and rivers from the cooling of the reactor . This heats the water , killing fish and other types of marine life . The average or annual release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere shorten our life span by 37 minutes . This also raises the background level of radiation by 3% thus adding an extra 7000 cancer deaths per year . The cases of cancer deaths go up in areas around nuclear power plants . Children with asthma living in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant are 50 times more likely to die of cancer than a healthy child living in the same area . Studies done by the EPA and NRC reveal that workers at nuclear power plants are more likely to die from cancer due to the proximity of radioactive elements . Naturally occurring radiation in the environment is greater than the trace amounts given off by nuclear power plants . However people would rather not take the risk of being exposed to unnecessary amounts of radiation by living near a nuclear power plant . A recent EPA study on the worst case scenario of a nuclear accident concluded that if a nuclear reactor 1/5 the size of the Chernobyl plant in theformer Soviet Union had a...
