And Chernobyl was just a tiny boo-boo, right?

Well that's settled then. Even though there was a huge out-of-control blaze in a nuclear waste incinerator in Japan, that released enormous clouds of smoke hundreds of feet into the air and burned hotly enough to take 2 hours for firefighters to control, the AP reports that there was no radiation released into the atmosphere. The reporter also notes how heavily dependent Japan is on nuclear energy, implying that a major accident at a nuclear plant could really spell trouble for the citizens and the industry. But the journalist didn't connect the two things, big fire + vulnerable industry, far enough to actually say that.

So we're supposed to believe that Japan's major source of energy is totally safe and that blazing nuclear waste doesn't give off any byproducts, and that nuclear waste burning up into the atmosphere doesn't release radiation, and that the gigantic protective suits the firemen were wearing when hosing down the fire were just comfy winterwear or perhaps traditional garb, historically worn by firemen in such ceremonial acts as dousing a flaming pile of radioactive sludge, and that the nuclear industry would never, ever cover up an accident that potentially exposed millions of people to radiation, because nuclear power is our friend. Three Mile what?

I call bullshit on this. Can anyone prove to me that flaming nuclear waste burns totally clean? If that's the case, why don't we burn plutonium instead of using weak-ass nuclear fission?