Didn't Fujiyama fail because the tsunami took out power to the plant and took out their backup generators?
Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups?
There was an excellent episode of Nova fairly recently (within the last year, I think) on nuclear power. It covered Fujiyama and other conventional designs, and then spent a lot of time on upcoming safer and more economical designs, and the large number of nuclear power startup companies that are working on them.
For example, one design involved a liquid fuel that has to be held in a container that has a high volume to surface area ratio in order to sustain a chain reaction. The design had such a container, connected via a pipe in the bottom to another container with a shape that cannot support a reaction.
During normal operation the fuel is kept in the top container by a plug in the pipe. The clever part is what that plug is made of it. It is frozen fuel, kept frozen by cooling coils around the pipe.
If the plant loses power the plug melts, and the fuel drains. This is inherently massively safer than conventional plants. Instead of always being on the verge of disaster, relying on active controls to keep that at bay, the newer designs require active controls to keep running. The failure modes are to stop running instead of to run out of control.
> Germany may not be able to get tsunamis, but are tsunamis they only thing that can take out power and take out the backups?
That’s exactly the issue. All the plants are at rivers. Most directly in the floodplains. With backup generators that end up covered by water during the floods. With floods every autumn.
A river flooding is not the same order of magnitude (probably by more than 1) as a tsunami - so care to share any shutdowns of German nuke plants caused by river flooding ?
BTW my first Job was at a world leading hydrodynamics org in the Nuke and Computer modeling section
