this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
256 points (96.7% liked)
Technology
59554 readers
3096 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Interesting. What is the chance a nuclear plant goes boom? Sounds legit.
Very unlikely if maintained properly. The other facts are a lot more important. In addition to the most important one of WAY cheaper price per kWh (of Solar/Wind). And one medium important thing: Nuclear plants often rely on a river for cooling. If said river gets to warm/carries to little water the plant may have to shut down (happened a lot in France recently).
Well, are they? All of them?
Extremely. Like to levels you wouldn't believe. You need more paper work than a printer to be able to enter one. To work at one requires psych evals, tests, multiple background checks, and a whole pile of things.
There are often loads of armed guards, and surveillance everywhere.
You're only talking about security against threats here. I'm swiss and Switzerland is known for doing things extra thoroughly (and extra paperwork), right?
But then i hear from an ex-firefighter, how Mühleberg once nearly blowed up because the cooling channel was clogged with wood and debris after a record rain. How they had to cool the reactors with hoses and how it was hushed up on media (there are one or two short articles from small papers online).
Or how Beznau had used lower-quality steel in their pressure tank. How it had it's runtime prolonged, despite cracks in said tank.
Not to mention some german or french reactors.
Now imagine, how thoroughly the old and widespread, yet quite dangerous pressurised water reactors are secured against environmental factors or malfunction in, let's say, russia? Or egypt?
The main threats in nuclear reactors are age and human carelessnes.
Oh absolutely. The threats are often internal more than external. If the employees are careless or if there are contaminants, there could be consequences. Now not meltdown consequences but costing millions of dollar worth of damages and replacements.