The general public has long had a degree of wariness and uncertainty surrounding nuclear reactors, thanks largely to the fact that many associate nuclear energy with nuclear bombs. That's fair, thanks to the two atomic bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and ended World War II. Those detonations, along with the previous Trinity Test, launched the atomic age, and from those disastrous uses of atomic energy, scientists built the first nuclear reactors to provide clean energy to households across the world. It's not uncommon for some to ask if a nuclear reactor could explode like an atomic bomb. The short answer is no — a nuclear reactor cannot detonate like a nuclear bomb, as the two are entirely different forms of technology that only share a fundamental reliance on fission.