> of course sometimes things like Chernobyl happen
Chernobyl is an older design than plants we builds today. if I recall correctly Chinese plants include a lot of passive safety features especially in the wake of Fukushima (gen III / gen III+). Fukushima by the way, despite repeatedly ignoring warnings of the risks of not being prepared for realistic tsunamis and earthquakes it might experience, survived relatively well all things considered. If I recall correctly they used a mildly updated design than Chernobyl.
It’ll be interesting to start seeing gen IV reactors coming online since they have an identical safety profile to fusion. If anything goes wrong the reaction stops rather than the runaway reactions common to traditional reactor designs that are basically fission bombs hooked up to a steam engine.
> Fukushima by the way, despite repeatedly ignoring warnings of the risks of not being prepared for realistic tsunamis and earthquakes it might experience, survived relatively well all things considered.
Yes most nuclear incidents involved risks being ignored. But I don't see how this is an argument for nuclear. This will keep happening as long as we have this stuff built and operated by the lowest bidder bound to make as much profit as they can.
I figured someone works raise that argument because it’s an easy and obvious one but is not helpful.
A) coal power plants ignore warnings too. It’s just that it ends up as a distributed problem of cancer clusters and failing lungs m as by years later that’s harder to link
B) shipping oil creates a lot of ecological and human damage through oil spills
C) even with all the incidents, nuclear is still safer than carbon-based energy sources. It’s death/kWh is closer to wind.
D) gen IV reactors have no risk of runaway reactions negating your argument
So even with the issues they’re still safer and only get safer
Chernobyl is an older design than plants we builds today. if I recall correctly Chinese plants include a lot of passive safety features especially in the wake of Fukushima (gen III / gen III+). Fukushima by the way, despite repeatedly ignoring warnings of the risks of not being prepared for realistic tsunamis and earthquakes it might experience, survived relatively well all things considered. If I recall correctly they used a mildly updated design than Chernobyl.
It’ll be interesting to start seeing gen IV reactors coming online since they have an identical safety profile to fusion. If anything goes wrong the reaction stops rather than the runaway reactions common to traditional reactor designs that are basically fission bombs hooked up to a steam engine.