Report: Nuclear Plants Should Focus On Risks Posed By External Events

mdsolar (1045926) writes "Engineers at American nuclear plants have been much better at calculating the risk of an internal problem that would lead to an accident than they have at figuring the probability and consequences of accidents caused by events outside a plant, a report released Thursday by the National Academy of Science said. Accidents that American reactors are designed to withstand, like a major pipe break, are "stylized" and do not reflect the bigger source of risk, which is external, according to the study. That conclusion is one of the major lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, which began after an earthquake at sea caused a tsunami.

Stylized

[mdsolar]

It really harms the credibility of the NRC when their risk calculation come to a accident every ten thousand years while the real world rate is one every 18 years. There are ten or more near misses each year http://www.ucsusa.org/news/pre... [ucsusa.org] so nuclear plants are operating far outside the claimed safety envelope.

Re:already done

[tp1024]

If your definition of "reasonable" is "one millionth" you'd be right, but also perfectly unreasonable. There is such a thing as natural radioactivity, it is everywhere. And if you demand that "artificial" radiation must be less than 1/10.000th of natural radioactivity in the worst contaminated areas to be "reasonable", then you suffer from a gross form hubris. Your claims about Iodine-129 neglect to mention that is has 1/1.000.000.000th of the activity of I-131. Even by your stupid definition, it's not a problem. This is further compounded by the fact that Iodine is highly mobile, most of all, it is water soluble. This means that it will be dispersed in the environment at a much greater rate than it will be concentrated in humans. In fact, it is not even detectable around Fukushima Daiichi.

You also neglect to say that the total radiotoxicity of all longlived fission isotopes is less than the radiotoxicity of the natural uranium before it went through the reactor. It is LESS than what was naturally there anyway. I know you don't care about such facts, lots of other people do.

Your body is full of potassium-40, carbon-14, thorium, uranium and their decay products. If you're so scared of radioactivity that you must demand Cs-137 to decay to one-millionth of the current concentrations before you feel safe, then go commit suicide. There is no place in the solar system that will satisfy your demands. You, sir, are a lunatic.