Hazardous locations for nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants and reactors may be projected and installed in locations where vulnerability to surface subsidence, seismic shock and earthquake faults were insufficiently studied. Other ignored factors may include hazards to the environment from radioactively contaminated steam or gases, or contaminated solid or liquid residue disposal.

Nuclear power plants proposed, under construction, or installed, may be subject to protest actions by the nearest community residents in whose view a hazard exists for the population. Opposition is not only specific to 'melt-down' and other nuclear disaster possibilities or slow radioactive contamination, but generally, against the size of the power plant, the clearing of landscape for it, etc. Frequently opposition is psychologically motivated by the fact that the community may have had no chance to participate in the location decisions made by private power companies or local government or both.

In 1994 the Austrian government protested to the USA concerning the use of their technology to complete a Soviet-style reactor in the Czech Republic near its border. It was argued that the basic design was flawed, the plan to modify it was unproven, and the risks had never been publicly examined.