3 ms·

By failure I assume you mean catestrophic disaster. The passive safety doesn't mean no failures, it just limits the damage done by them. The reactor is probably

By failure I assume you mean catestrophic disaster. The passive safety doesn't mean no failures, it just limits the damage done by them. The reactor is probably wrecked if the safety measures have to kick in. But yes, if an operator (or more likely a whole shift of operators) was malicious, they probably could defeat the safety systems. The main innovation is basically just a huge tank of water that can drain into the reactor by gravity, so if you emptied this tank then the safety system is defeated. They could also just take a fuel rod, break it apart and dump it into a schools water tank. You can't really create a system that defends against murderous intent.

sidewndr46 4y ago
OK good point, but I'm guessing no one would be crazy enough to pick up a fuel rod and try and break it. I think you'd actually get burnt just from handling it. In any case I was actually thinking about a foolish operator, not a malicious one.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  Honestly only time will tell just how effective the passive safety here is. Even with the previous generation of reactors it takes multiple failures all at once for an accident to happen, so who's to say one day we're not going to see some new unforseen issue happening just at the wrong time. In fact this kind of touches on why some folks are looking at more radical changes. There are thorium reactor designs which require active, maintained energy to become critical at all. A melted block of thorium is sub-critical! None of these systems are any where near productionizable though. Overall, remember this isn't the first time someone thought they finally "cracked" safety. This is really about us getting more experience and refining our practices over time, not some "now nuclear is totally safe" threshold. https://how.complexsystems.fail/ https://how.complexsystems.fail/ was on hacker news a while back, you might like to read it to get more of a feel for how the progress of nuclear safety really happens.

sidewndr46 4y ago

OK good point, but I'm guessing no one would be crazy enough to pick up a fuel rod and try and break it. I think you'd actually get burnt just from handling it. In any case I was actually thinking about a foolish operator, not a malicious one.

advisedwang 4y ago
Honestly only time will tell just how effective the passive safety here is. Even with the previous generation of reactors it takes multiple failures all at once for an accident to happen, so who's to say one day we're not going to see some new unforseen issue happening just at the wrong time. In fact this kind of touches on why some folks are looking at more radical changes. There are thorium reactor designs which require active, maintained energy to become critical at all. A melted block of thorium is sub-critical! None of these systems are any where near productionizable though. Overall, remember this isn't the first time someone thought they finally "cracked" safety. This is really about us getting more experience and refining our practices over time, not some "now nuclear is totally safe" threshold. https://how.complexsystems.fail/ https://how.complexsystems.fail/ was on hacker news a while back, you might like to read it to get more of a feel for how the progress of nuclear safety really happens.