3 ms·

Were the safer designs available in 1971?

• catwell 9y ago
  Yes. Pressurized water reactors are very old, they were developed around the same time as boiling water reactors, in the 50s. Their superior safety has been known for a long time as well, which is why all 58 French reactors active today are PWRs (and most of those in the US are as well). That being said, it is still probably a bad idea to put a power plant in a place which is known to be exposed to tsunami...
  • gruturo 9y ago
    > That being said, it is still probably a bad idea to put a power plant in a place which is known to be exposed to tsunami... ...Especially in the country which originated the word tsunami
  • loup-vaillant 9y ago
    Pressurised water reactors still rely on active security. Molten salt for instance allows passive designs.
• loup-vaillant 9y ago
  I believe we had molten salt prototypes already at that time. If that design were favoured, instead of pressurised water, I bet it would have been pretty damn safe. I believe they achieved relatively high standards despite the lack of funds anyway. (By the way, molten salt is coming back, but mostly lack the funding necessary to prototype bigger reactors.)
• nickik 9y ago
  Yes they were. Liquid Fuel Molten Salt reactors had been build and tested. The researches were ready to start building production scale units next.