It's underground. Any ways you propose to make water flow up would get you a Nobel prize. It's in a containment--a weaker containment, but still a containment, and still strong enough to be impenetrable. It's impossible to fly an airplane into, and if you did, the effect would be zero. How are they lightly guarded? Do you want SAM batteries onsite? Do you want an entire army stationed there? Removing the cooling water (somehow) would result in the fire department pouring water on the new fuel assemblies until the pool could be refilled. Even at Chernobyl, only 5% of the core was released. Chernobyl was a worst-case scenario accident at the worst reactor in the world. "Region" is a bit disingenuous. If hell froze over and this physically impossible accident happened the exclusion zone would be about the size of Chernobyl's. Is it a "region?" A region of a state, and a fairly small region at that. Is nuclear power worth enduring vicious attacks by people who don't know physics? Is it worthwhile to have had one harebrained stunt killing 4,400 people, while coal kills 30,000 every year? Wind is nowhere near 2 cents/kWh. It might operate 30% of the time if you're lucky, and we need something that can provide baseload electricity. The fundamental debate is not between wind and nuclear but between nuclear and coal. Likewise, IIRC nuclear is 1.82 cents/kWh. That includes a tax paid for a nuclear waste disposal fund which Congress appropriated to pet projects, storage of fuel for upwards of 40 years, and financially supporting regulators at upwards of $200/man-hour. Nuclear energy internalizes its costs and is punished by the market for doing so. What are these "hidden costs" you speak of? --Stewart Peterson