http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/nuclear-reactor-at-fort-belvoir-to-be-decommissioned
This is quite a shock. Never heard a whisper that there was an operating reactor ten miles from the White House.
It was shut down in 1973.
Nuke plants with containment vessels are not that dangerous. Chernobyl had no containment vessel and when it had a meltdown the radiation was spread quite far. Other nuke plants which had problems had minimal to no release of radioactivity.
Compare nuke plants with other large scale energy production plants:
a] Coal plants result in killing miners to get the coal (it is a dangerous process) and burning the coal produces a lot of nasty stuff.
b] Hydro-electric plants - if the dam breaks there is a massive loss of life
c] Natural Gas - highly flammable. The only fuel for major power plants that can go boom.
All large scale energy production entails risks. It is just the nature of the beast. The biggest risk of a nuke plant is a mistake that ruins a multi-billion dollar plant - not a risk of explosion or large scale release of radioactivity.
I took a physics class on energy production/distribution back in the early 1980s. If you want electricity, you have to bear some costs. It is very expensive to build the electrical distribution grid. No source of generating power is without risk. If you are worried about carbon-dioxide or harmful byproducts that can hit people downwind/stream of the plant then nuclear is your best choice. There are only so many places a dam can be built for hydro power, and a dam breaking is a true disaster of massive loss of life. Hydro probably has the least total consequences followed by nukes and then gas plants. Coal is pretty nasty stuff with a lot of side effects.
There's a dam on the upper Columbia River here in TN (or possibly very southern east KY), which could let go at literally any time, and the threat is so... freaky?.... that the people simply can't process it, so they ignore it. Estimations are that it would push debris and flooding up to the steps on the capitol hill in Nashville. A very literal tsunami, everyone in the path dead, no real chance of escape.
I would be dam(n) sure moving my home to higher ground out of the path.
(The other dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority, aren't in as bad a shape for whatever reason, though the potential watershed would be much worse.)
I spent several years as the Army Reactor Program Manager, until 2010. I got involved with the decommissioning of the Army Pulse Radiation Facility at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD. Army just finished decommissioning the MH-1A Sturgis. SM-1 is next. That leaves SM-1A at Fort Greely, AK, to be decommissioned in the coming years. The Army continues to operate the Fast Burst Reactor at White Sands Missile Range, NM.
Considering the ongoing delays with licensing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) today, it's interesting that the Army (following the Navy with the Nautilus) went from nothing in 1954 to an operating nuclear power plant at SM-1 by 1957. In three years! It takes forever these days with the NRC. Unreal, it should not be so difficult. But lawyers, bless their hearts...
When I worked on Fort Belvoir, I was about 200 yards from the reactor, and we'd often set up our experiments and demonstrations in the large field next to it. There's also a trail along the fence behind the plant, and I'd often run past the building.