> nuclear power is tightly coupled and complex Sounds like you have read Charles Perrow's 1984 book Normal Accidents [1]. New fuel systems are actually key to

> nuclear power is tightly coupled and complex Sounds like you have read Charles Perrow's 1984 book Normal Accidents [1]. New fuel systems are actually key to safe design, IMHO. All the major nuclear power incidents, that I'm aware of, are due to one underlying problem: zirconium clad fuel rods produce large amounts of hydrogen during loss of coolant accidents (LOCA). Nuclear power plants weren't supposed to go BOOM but it turns out they do so readily with hydrogen explosions. Even with zirconium clad fuel rods, the CANDU reactor design seems to have managed the complexity and tight-coupling issues surrounding nuclear power generation; the design, however, never managed to reduce the immense capital costs involved. Price-per-Performance is all that matters and in an age of cheap natural gas. I'm not convinced that new nuclear reactor designs will find anything other than niche markets. There are many lessons to learn from Charles Perrow but complete distrust of engineering should not be one of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents