3 ms·

I went through a phase of reading about nuclear power and in particular the nuclear accidents. It feels like we kinda got to the Comet¹ stage of Nuclear power a

I went through a phase of reading about nuclear power and in particular the nuclear accidents. It feels like we kinda got to the Comet¹ stage of Nuclear power and gave up. We still learn lessons from each accident, for example Fukushima has resulted in Passive auto recombiners being installed which convert hydrogen back to water. It also added provisions for using mobile generation and cooling (fire trucks). I certainly don't have the answer but to how we can make nuclear power fool proof but I do feel like we should still be asking the question. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet

Xylakant 6y ago
> We still learn lessons from each accident, for example Fukushima has resulted in Passive auto recombiners being installed which convert hydrogen back to water. Seems we are on a global level not very much learning from incidents. These are common (mandatory?) in Germany and colloquially named “Töpfer-Kerze” after the minister who had them installed: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaktorsicherheit#T%C3%B6pfer-Kerze https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaktorsicherheit#T%C3%B6pfe... Klaus Töpfer was responsible for nuclear security from 1987-1994. This would have been the time to learn.
corty 6y ago
Use of passive auto recombiners (PARs) started over 30 years ago on a large scale and has been state of the art for more than two decades now: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/020/33020098.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... However, many operators didn't want to spend the money, which is why Fukushima didn't have a PAR at the time of the accident. The problem with Fukushima is that I fear we do not learn from accidents. Otherwise, Fukushima wouldn't even have been in operation at the time of the accident as it is an old reactor model well past its design life. The location was, as we have known before the accident, poorly chosen. Safety measures, such as PARs, seawalls and properly redundant power supplies were skipped or badly implemented due to the cost involved. All this was known before the accident, however neither the operator nor the national oversight took any action before it was too late.
imtringued 6y ago
The problem with nuclear power is that nobody is interested in fixing obvious flaws if it ruins the profitability of an existing plant. No matter how safe your new modern design is, it won't lead to the shut down of existing unsafe plants.

Xylakant 6y ago

> We still learn lessons from each accident, for example Fukushima has resulted in Passive auto recombiners being installed which convert hydrogen back to water. Seems we are on a global level not very much learning from incidents. These are common (mandatory?) in Germany and colloquially named “Töpfer-Kerze” after the minister who had them installed: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaktorsicherheit#T%C3%B6pfer-Kerze https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaktorsicherheit#T%C3%B6pfe... Klaus Töpfer was responsible for nuclear security from 1987-1994. This would have been the time to learn.

corty 6y ago

Use of passive auto recombiners (PARs) started over 30 years ago on a large scale and has been state of the art for more than two decades now: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/020/33020098.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... However, many operators didn't want to spend the money, which is why Fukushima didn't have a PAR at the time of the accident. The problem with Fukushima is that I fear we do not learn from accidents. Otherwise, Fukushima wouldn't even have been in operation at the time of the accident as it is an old reactor model well past its design life. The location was, as we have known before the accident, poorly chosen. Safety measures, such as PARs, seawalls and properly redundant power supplies were skipped or badly implemented due to the cost involved. All this was known before the accident, however neither the operator nor the national oversight took any action before it was too late.

imtringued 6y ago

The problem with nuclear power is that nobody is interested in fixing obvious flaws if it ruins the profitability of an existing plant. No matter how safe your new modern design is, it won't lead to the shut down of existing unsafe plants.