alt Hacker NewsCurious 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?
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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+
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.