Well, this actually happened. A guy with a death wish decided to commit suicide by blowing up a nuclear reactor, and he succeeded [1].

Well, actually we don't know this for sure, because the guy (obviously) did not survive to tell the story. It may have been intentional suicide, or simply an unintentional operator error.

But it does not matter. Since then the design of nuclear reactors evolved in such a way as to make it very difficult for an operator to be able to intentionally or unintentionally trigger a blow-up or a melt-down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

Thanks for the informative reply.

It’s good to hear that it’s risk that is already mitigated.

Personally the thing that turns me off nuclear the most is that if things do go wrong sections of land basically become uninhabitable for thousands of years. I probably shouldn’t care but it seams like a major downside.