Posted: Mar 22, 2011 10:56 pm
ConnyRaSk wrote:for all the nuclear power supporters, you do realise that it was the break-down of the power supply that led to this disaster in Japan. How can you be so (f- cock-) sure that the power supply is fail-safe for all other plants around the world, even the so-called up-to-date plants?
It took a huge natural disaster to wipe out multiple layers of safety features. Most other plants in the world will almost certainly never face such a level of devastation. Plants work on a philosophy of layers of safety features and its only because of the vast scale that all were overcome in this case. Even then the results were hardly catastrophic for the outside world.
Many plants are designed with passive safety features which require no operator intervention. Many have large heat sinks so that even in loss of coolant incidents there is not the kind of problem associated with a lack of power for water pumps. Some have containment structures which can carry away excess heat. Not all plants are like the one in Japan but even if they were it has shown just how large an incident can be withstood and with such little consequence to the wider world.