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Ok. These aren't birth defects, but the central point remains.

The Japanese one had some problems as you can see here

Nulear power is safer than any other method of mass-producing electrical power when measured as deaths\MWH produced.

Just for some perspective on how bad Chernobyl actually was, here is something I wrote for a friend of mine in response to an article he had read:

Basically, however, the worst-case scenario -- if a plane crashed into a reactor, destroyed the containment dome and set fire to the core -- has
essentially already happened in Chernobyl. How bad was Chernobyl? Pretty bad. Did it leave huge areas uninhabitable for all time? Hardly. Check out World Nuclear.Org for some up-to-date info on the aftereffects of Chernobyl. It was a really bad
accident, but not even close to being the end of the world.

Some quick point and counter-point:

"...the ensuing cloud of radiation would have dwarfed the ones at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl."

-- First off, it is physically impossible -- no way it can happen -- that a reactor could explode like a nuclear weapon, so the comparison to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is right out. Three Mile Island? Less radiation was released from the TMI event than you would receive from a single chest x-ray. See the above link about Chernobyl. And what would make us think that a U.S. reactor with a similar output level to Chernobyl would create a bigger crisis than Chernobyl? If anything, our reactors are MORE efficient than the Russian reactors, so they would have LESS radioactive material, and therefore cause less of a problem in a similar situation...

"Dozens of US reactors have repeatedly failed even
modest security tests over the years."

-- This is absolutely true. Roughly 50% of the plants tested failed security tests. Of course, 50% passed -- and what they fail to tell you is
that the tests were conducted by the same people who invented the security systems and put them is place -- which means they KNEW exactly how best to
defeat the security measures -- even then 50% still passed. Unless we need to worry about these guys blowing up plants...

"Without continuous monitoring and guaranteed
water flow, the thousands of tons of radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in those fragile pools would rapidly melt into
super-hot radioactive balls of lava that would burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson. Striking water, they would blast gigantic billows of horribly radioactive steam into the atmosphere. The
radioactive clouds would then enshroud New York, New Jersey, New England, and carry deep into the Atlantic and up into Canada and across to Europe and around the globe again and again."

-- First off, TMI did suffer a meltdown, yet the containment dome did what was expected -- it kept the melt from going down into the earth. Even if
the top of the containment dome were breached by an airplane or explosion or something, the containment UNDER the core would still be itact. Yeah, there would be some radiation leakage, but it is not like it would fry everything within a fifty mile radius or anything. If we could assume that the containment under the core did fail (not likely), then it is theoretically possible that the material could hit a water table and create a large amount of radioactive steam -- but would it contaminate the world?
Back in the fifties and sixties, we detonated hundreds of megatons worth of nuclear weapons in the ocean -- nuclear weapons are far, far hotter than a melted nuclear core (especially the fusion reactions from thermonuclear weapons), yet we didn't see huge clouds of radioactive steam eveloping the earth. Of course, we set these bombs off far out in the Pacific -- but there were witnesses within a few miles of these explosions who somehow survived. Even then, the story above suggests that these clouds would reach
Europe -- if a cloud from the East Coast generated by a melted nuke core in New York could reach Europe, certainly a cloud from a 25 megaton
thermonuclear explosion could have reached California or Mexico -- but it didn't. The only way radioactive fallout can travel appreciable distances is when you have high-altitude airbursts of very large nuclear weapons --
like the multi-megaton bombs set off in the upper atmosphere to test the effects of the electromagnetic pulse effect -- even the airbursts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were insufficient to send radioactive material flying
around the globe.

And another thing -- we have set off many, many weapons buried deep in the earth -- yet the explosions underground did not cause the water table to boil up in a huge cloud of radioactive steam.

The fact is is that the very worst possible nuclear reactor accident smallest nuclear weapon detonation. The U.S. alone has set off more than 350 nuclear weapons over the years, with an equal number set off by Russia
and dozens (if not hundreds) set off by other nuclear powers. To suggest that the destruction of a single nuclear power plant would result in an
environmental catastrophe that nearly a thousand nuclear weapon detonations has failed to create is just right out.

And finally, reactors are designed to fail safe -- we've learned a lot since TMI.

Ahhhh, this stuff drives me crazy. In the U.S., nuclear power has never killed anyone. Worldwide, even considering Chernobyl, nuclear power is the safest method of generating power on a per-megawatt basis. And it's plenty
green compared to many of the alternatives. And -- unlike most of the alternatives -- it actually has the potential to generate enough power to
actually support our economy...

It doesn't matter how many we can destroy before they hit us, because when we strike back, and we WILL strike back, it will eventually come back to us in the form of nuclear radation. Here's a map for ya, and some more info on the effects of a nuclear bomb here

Your point that MAD is "Un-American" is completely untrue. I personally believe in Mutally Assured Destruction. My opinion is an American one because I can be proud say it out loud, cause that's what Americans do