In their defense though, that kind of thing does happen in real life
It really doesn't. I don't think we've had a single nuclear reactor actually go boom to anything even approaching that extent -- about the worst has been Chernobyl, and even it didn't wipe clean the countryside. Contaminate a junkload of stuff, sure, but the explody bits involved there wasn't that impressive.
In that one episode of AWX, not only do two go critical and explode, they explode in an absolutely massive way. Apparently because some pipes are torn out. Auto-shutoff where?
and I would imagine that if you have super-advanced tech, the number of things that can go wrong are exponentially higher then they are with our current tech level.
Last I checked, we've actually become successively less likely to experience catastrophic failure as our technology has improved :V Nuclear's safer than coal, etc., etc.
A modern reactor nowadays, insofar as I'm aware, is basically
incapable of exploding. Like, you could hit the powerplant
with a nuke and it wouldn't cook off. It'd stop working, and there'd probably be quite a bit of radioactive mess, but no successive boom. And beyond that, they're the next best thing to impossible to intentionally wreck. We've gotten
really good at making sure the things don't screw up -- most of the problems we have with nuclear is because of human failure, not mechanical. Not upgrading, cutting corners, etc.
... that said, yeah, it
is a pretty common sci-fi science failure. S'become bloody jarring for me, though. Portable reactors -- MS powerplants, tanks, whatev' -- I can wave off a bit easier, but an actual powerplant is, like. No. And the thought of the things being left on for over a decade and a half is just...
more no. *it-doesn't-work-like-that flailing*
No engineer is going to build a reactor that goes for a decade without human interaction without shutting itself off, like. After a month or two at the most. Probably less, because
failsafe.
I guess I
sorta' can't blame it. The show
was made in '96, so there was both less sophisticated methodology and more prevalent misinformation regarding nuclear et al. Still rankles. It's sometimes astounding how hard space magic technology apparently simultaneously hits people with the idiot stick, when it really,
really shouldn't. Realize it's more a failure of the writers than anything, but... still.
