Is Washington a nuclear state?
Nuclear “power” as such is not “classified” information as say nuclear “weapons” are …
David Keefer
It doesn't matter. A civilian nuclear reactor for power generation can become a weapon, and an uncontrolled meltdown can actually explode.
The social environment surrounding nuclear plants is worse than any physical hazards by far, however.
If you “work” at a plant like that, maybe you are a steamfitter, plumber or electrician etc., but all your acquaintances and the people you meet and greet in town on an everyday basis when you are not at work are kompromats, political apparatchiks, eco-terrorists, industrial saboteurs, foreign spies, critical infrastructure terrorists, and so on and so forth.
Those are the types of people who surround you and totally dominate your social scene when you work at a sensitive facility.
The key to managing “critical infrastructure” is to make it much less critical, and a nuclear reactor that can be shut down safely for maintenance and then restarted without incident is an important step in that direction.
Robust systems cannot be built with an absolute dependency on fragile critical junctures which are prone to failure and political compromise. Top secret government classification is one such fragile critical juncture, by which persons with official access to it are made sitting ducks for blackmail, extortion and espionage, and held responsible for situations and circumstances beyond their control.