Today's plants far safer than Fukushima: US expert

Today's plants far safer than Fukushima: US expert

The first of Fukushima Dai-ichi's six nuclear reactors came online in 1970, a full nine years before the Three-Mile Island crisis in the United States and 16 years before Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear disaster.

"The Fukushima plants were early plants, and so... more modern designs would be much more robust in their capability to deal with the situation" that Japan faced, said former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Richard Meserve.

"Plants are much safer in their designs today."

Fukushima plant celebrated full 40 years just few months before the disaster caused by magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 14-meter (46-foot) tsunami impact. Its reactors belong to first generation of BWRs designed in the 60s, lacking many safety systems which are a certainty in newer plants.

Thus using Fukushima disaster as an argument against building new modern nuclear plants or whole nuclear powr field is simply not correct. Especially when advanced breeder reactor designs like Molten salt reactor like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor or Advanced Heavy Water Reactor hold promise to deliver enough energy to satisfy humanitys needs for hundreds of thousands of years, and do so actually cheaper and easier than nuclear fusion, all while burning all current nuclear waste and offering unprecedented passive safety.

That goes without saying. Look at how Fukushima Daini fare under almost the exact same set of circumstances as Fukushima Daiichi

reply to post by Maslo


from what i remeber they were about to be taken out of action..
or atleast upgraded, something like that