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Pop, there is no perfect safe nuclear reactor design, and the liquid salt reactors, pebble bed reactors, and smaller inert gas cooled reactors all have an Achilles heel as well.
Our national electrical power grid is designed and engineered to supply power utilizing large, high density, constant power utility plants, and nuclear is the best in this regard.
Over the years, the NRC has succeeded in creating layer after layer of regulations so taxing that meeting all the regs represents over 70% of new plant costs, and close to 50% of operating costs.
There is all kinds of information about incidents, and bad plants. The real bad ones are legendary... The sticking pressure relief valve and lack of operator recognition that caused the TMI core meltdown. The same plant behavior at Davis Besse about 18 months prior had no incident because the operators, without totally recognizing the situation or root cause, still implemented the correct immediate action. The time the control room at Clinton plant in Illinois played "scram Sam", and reset the scram breaker in a controlled area by reaching into the area with a broomstick. The five year period where Millstone I and II did an emergency refuel every maintenance cycle, exceeding the allowed heat storage capacity of their spent fuel pools. Davis Bessie having a boron corroded reactor vessel head crdm steel layer less than 3/64" thick, not the as built 2" thickness. The coke can left in the bottom of the Detroit Fermi plant during construction, which caused a fuel channel failure when the plant was started up.
All these are quite well documented, in the public domain, and are available to read at the NRC.gov librar
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