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The absurdity of nuclear plant safety: The risk of a disasters is "completely negligible", but fly a model plane or drone above a plant and all hell breaks loos

The absurdity of nuclear plant safety: The risk of a disasters is "completely negligible", but fly a model plane or drone above a plant and all hell breaks loose. You can't have it both ways: Either scenarios with attackers flying Cessnas full of fertilizer into your facility etc. are a safety danger and the plants need to be reinforced immediately or drones above your plant are completely harmless and should not be prosecuted anymore than drones flying above the house of a celebrity. And if these plants are not safe, then shooting drones from the sky and imprisoning drone pilots will not change that fact. Edit: I've added quotes around "completely negligible" to make clear I was citing public opinion rather than presenting my own (@quonn).

quonn 12y ago
Actually, the risk of disasters is not negligible at all, in particular if there is a sufficient number of power plants (431 worldwide currently). In the last 30 years, we have already seen two incidents that were above the "maximum credible accident", that is the probability of them happening was considered to be negligible. With that number of plants running, I would expect a major incident _somewhere_ every 20 years and historically we have seen more than that. Here [0] is a quite recent study by probably the most important german research institute that predicts one incident every 10 to 20 years, based on the number of plants running and data of historical incidents. There is also a nice summary in German [1]. [0] http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012... [1] http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0 http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0
- izacus 12y ago
  What does that have to do with drones flying over powerplants? I agree in general, but here the response to what is essentially a toy flying over a concrete several meters thick bunker is just crazy.
  - quonn 12y ago
    Nothing, my comment was not about the drones. - I was responding to the parent commenter, before he or she put "completely negligible" in quotes.
    - Perseids 12y ago
      Thanks for those articles, btw. They provide interesting data points in the (somewhat endless) safety debate.
andreasvc 12y ago
The risk is not completely negligible, no one actually claims that. However, it has to be weighed against concerns such as climate change and fuel security. Moreover, my impression was that in this case it wasn't so much that these drones present a safety risk, but that they are worried that they are being used to gather intelligence.
yoha 12y ago
This is not about nuclear hazard. Bombing a nuclear plant may not cause a fallout, but it will still disrupt its functioning. Power sources are critical sites. Imagine the havoc of a general outage. Now, consider this from a strategic perspective.
- Perseids 12y ago
  Ok, ignore the part about nuclear safety. My point about shooting down drones vs. actual improving safety still stands. If the stability of your power network is important to you, then do something about those attack vectors, i.e. build more redundancies or reinforce the roof yet again or deploy ground to air missiles (that last one sounds utterly crazy, but it still would make more sense). Those reactions remind of companies who had a security vulnerability disclosed, and instead of fixing it they sue the researcher.

quonn 12y ago

Actually, the risk of disasters is not negligible at all, in particular if there is a sufficient number of power plants (431 worldwide currently). In the last 30 years, we have already seen two incidents that were above the "maximum credible accident", that is the probability of them happening was considered to be negligible. With that number of plants running, I would expect a major incident _somewhere_ every 20 years and historically we have seen more than that. Here [0] is a quite recent study by probably the most important german research institute that predicts one incident every 10 to 20 years, based on the number of plants running and data of historical incidents. There is also a nice summary in German [1]. [0] http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/4245/2012/acp-12-4245-2012... [1] http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0 http://www.mpic.de/index.php?id=34298&type=0

izacus 12y ago
What does that have to do with drones flying over powerplants? I agree in general, but here the response to what is essentially a toy flying over a concrete several meters thick bunker is just crazy.
- quonn 12y ago
  Nothing, my comment was not about the drones. - I was responding to the parent commenter, before he or she put "completely negligible" in quotes.
  - Perseids 12y ago
    Thanks for those articles, btw. They provide interesting data points in the (somewhat endless) safety debate.

andreasvc 12y ago

The risk is not completely negligible, no one actually claims that. However, it has to be weighed against concerns such as climate change and fuel security. Moreover, my impression was that in this case it wasn't so much that these drones present a safety risk, but that they are worried that they are being used to gather intelligence.

yoha 12y ago

This is not about nuclear hazard. Bombing a nuclear plant may not cause a fallout, but it will still disrupt its functioning. Power sources are critical sites. Imagine the havoc of a general outage. Now, consider this from a strategic perspective.

Perseids 12y ago
Ok, ignore the part about nuclear safety. My point about shooting down drones vs. actual improving safety still stands. If the stability of your power network is important to you, then do something about those attack vectors, i.e. build more redundancies or reinforce the roof yet again or deploy ground to air missiles (that last one sounds utterly crazy, but it still would make more sense). Those reactions remind of companies who had a security vulnerability disclosed, and instead of fixing it they sue the researcher.