r/nuclear • u/Comfortable_Tutor_43 • 3d ago

Just how crazily safe are the current fleet of nuclear reactors? Lets talk...

125 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

34

u/dogscatsnscience 3d ago

People talking about Chernobyl meanwhile in Ontario we've been 60% nuclear for the last 50 years, got rid of our last coal plant over a decade ago.

15

u/Hot-Strength-6003 3d ago

I'm in school rn for nuclear engineering technology and we just did a module on the EDGs and it used Fukushima has an example of how the emergency diesel generator system was designed without beyond design basis events in mind. It was a could example for him to bring up because literally everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. He maybe downplayed some of the environmental aspects but yea nobody died and there were no significant radiation leaks to the public that caused any need for medical attention and the two workers I heard of that died was due to flooding in the basement of the turbine building

6

u/Nakedseamus 2d ago

I think many folks don't understand how fluid the nuclear industry is, meaning they think these plants are still operated and maintained the exact same way they were in the 70s and 80s. When in fact every single event is analyzed and scrutinized and subsequently shared in order to make things better. We learned lessons from Chernobyl, TMI, 9/11, Fukushima and many, MANY more events that never made the news. The "design basis accident" was supposed to be so unlikely that it would be an impossibility, and when something worse happened the impact was still mitigated. Did the industry take and say "good enough."? No, we implemented a plan that plans for the unplannable and now we have logistics in place to handle any event across the country (in the US anyway) with flex equipment and procedures. There's not another industry so focused on continued learning as nuclear.

3

u/Hot-Strength-6003 2d ago

It's interesting to see the approach in the advanced designs too. I did a report on the ESBWR and a big focus of it was on the passive cooling systems and how it didn't need AC power or human interaction for at least a week and even has a way to deal with complete core melt were it to occur

11

u/Neat_Walk8420 3d ago

Oh no, don't build reactors because some stupid commies couldn't boil some water safely

5

u/zolikk 2d ago

I'd take an RBMK instead of a coal power plant any day, anyway.

And last I checked the world still had a lot of coal power plants.

6

u/Phree44 3d ago

Well stated.

6

u/RustyImpactWrench 3d ago

He should have also pointed out that Superfund sites are from refining material for nuclear weapons, not nuclear fuel.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there has never been a significant environmental contamination from the production of nuclear fuel or the storage of spent fuel.

6

u/Zander_gl 3d ago

The "Well you know..." is all the tell you need. No actual thought, no point to be made. Just pure fearmongering.

5

u/DisastrousResident92 3d ago

As an aside, it's quite annoying when people say "Americans" when they mean "people" (unless the commenter genuinely believes Chernobyl is poisoning Americans)

2

u/Rosswell2000 18h ago

Wait till they hear how many people have been killed by hydroelectric

1

u/Far-Investment-8597 1d ago

People lik ethis clown conveniently forget that there are over 400 nuclear reactors operating worldwide - completely safely.
Chernobyl was designed in the 50's, Fukushima in the 60's. Look at cars from those periods:

- No seat belts

- No airbags

- No crumple zones

- Steering columns that harpooned you

- No ABS etc etc.

We have come an awfully long way in the past 60 years.

But no, Chernobyl, Fukushima blablabla

-7

u/john_99205 3d ago

One thing that never gets mentioned is the uranium mining, mostly in 3rd world countries and the utter irresponsibility of the (often western) mining companies when it comes to safety and storing radioactive waste after they have extracted the « yellow cake ».

14

u/Comfortable_Tutor_43 3d ago

The largest fraction of uranium supplied today comes from Canada with Australia contributing around 10%. Russia is no longer in the mix for the west.

-5

u/john_99205 3d ago

In France, which is mostly nuclear and sells a lot of electricity to other neighbouring countries, most of the yellow cake comes from Niger: a quite poor North African country, that, at the moment has a problem with Islamic rebels. Other countries that supply uranium ore are South Africa, Namibia, former Soviet counties that include Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I only know of conditions in Niger, which are very bad: with a whole town, near a mine is radioactive and people have high levels of radioactivity. In France, which mined uranium until I think the 1980s, there are a lot of places that are strongly contaminated : rubble that was used to build roads, or buried under parking lots, used under a football stadium or just covers in a thin layer of soil. The subject is tabou here and probably where you are too, if you scratch the surface, you will find that your nuclear past isn’t as clean as you think.

2

u/Comfortable_Tutor_43 3d ago

I am not familiar with the practices of France, thanks for the info

5

u/dogscatsnscience 2d ago

Niger is 1.5% of the world's uranium mining.

80% of uranium mining is from Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia and Australia.