You can probably safely assume this from the huge destructive power they possess when weaponized, but we can confirm that nuclear reactions are pretty dangerous things. Which is why people get a little anxious about mooted plants to switch to nuclear power in favour of fossil fuels, despite their ability to be a little more sustainable and ostensibly clean than burning a load of coal. Still, you could burn cats for fuel too, and it'd be cleaner than coal, but nobody would wanna do it. That would just be cruel. Relying on nuclear energy, meanwhile, opens the door for huge disasters that could kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Just look at Chernobyl or the area surrounding the Fukushima power plant when it got hit by a tsunami - they are not homes for hypochondriacs. Or anyone, really. Nothing like that would ever happen in the US though, would it? Well, yeah. It would and has. Or it nearly has, anyway. Wikipedia has an entire article for "lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents", and a large proportion of them happened on American soil. Or, well, in American power plants. It seems like there's no end to the amount of spilled uranium, leaking plutonium, and generally a lot of people dying of radiation poisoning as a result. The biggest "partial" nuclear meltdown in US history was the Three Mile Island incident, rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident With Wider Consequences. Which wasn't as bad as Chernobyl, but it easily could have been. And that would have had some pretty dire consequences for everyone.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
