[gip]

Curious how this new design addresses the biggest safety challenge of nuclear reactors (the issue that was the root cause of the Fukushima accident and an indirect cause of Chernobyl): how do we ensure that the nuclear core temperature remains controlled during exceptional events (e.g., earthquakes, structural failures) when the reactor must shut down abruptly?

[boringg]

Chernobyl and Fukushima were different accidents and causes. Chernobyl was a systemic failure of the soviet system. Fukushima was a wild edge case that an earthquake and tsunami drained the coolant.

[littlecranky67]

Edge cases don't count?

The truth is, all reactors ever built were considered safe at their time with whatever definition of safe. No one builds unsafe reactors. Yet they turned out not to be safe.

[consumer451]

The edge case was predicted, but market and political forces chose to ignore it. The GE Type II reactor had known issues. [0]

I should add that I am not strictly anti-nuclear, and it is super interesting that some of the largest funders of anti-nuclear propaganda have been actors from the fossil fuel industry. [1]

[0] https://publicintegrity.org/environment/reactors-at-heart-of...

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

[jltsiren]

Wild edge cases are to be expected when you do things at scale. If you build 20 buildings in different regions, at least one of them will likely face a once-in-1000-years natural disaster. And it's difficult to estimate how bad that particular kind of once-in-1000-years event can be, because you probably only have a century or two of reliable data.

[Forgeties79]

Let’s not forget that you don’t have to be a socialist/communist nation to decide you want to do the cheaper thing. Without robust regulations I guarantee you a Chernobyl-like disaster could easily happen in the US because of less scrupulous companies cutting corners and choosing the cheaper path. With Chernobyl it was the government instead of a private company.

We can talk all day about how the system incentivized people playing CYA rather than actually trying to solve the problem (true and fair critiques), but when it comes down to it, this happened because the cheaper option was chosen and potential issues were overlooked. That transcends political systems.

[Moldoteck]

You don't need to prevent it. You just need to prevent a catastrophe and even Fukushima did it relatively well - nobody died or will die from radiation. Current benchmark for (future) gen4 designs is having consequences limited to the area of the plant, think of 3MI but as worst case. But imo it's still an overkill, nuclear is one of the safest sources in terms of human deaths/kwh and the stat only gets better with gen3/3+

[lostlogin]

> You just need to prevent a catastrophe and even Fukushima did it relatively well - nobody died or will die from radiation.

“As of 2020, the total number of cancer and leukemia instances has risen to six cases according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).[5] In 2018 one worker died from lung cancer as a result from radiation exposure.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cas...

These are small numbers compared to the number that died due to the tsunami and the massive evacuation (to avoid radiation injuries). The frustrating bit is that they could have avoided it all.