To synthesize what both of you are saying, I think the biggest problem nuclear has is that (a) current regulations make new reactor construction prohibitively expensive & (b) current regulations are designed around preventing problems that occurred in reactors 50 years ago.

We're essentially strangling the innovation that would fix the things we're terrified of, which are why the regulations exist in the first place!

As a result, we still have Gen II reactors (Watts Bar) coming online. In 2016.

Bureaucracy: "We can't let you build this. It doesn't satisfy requirement IXX.53-A."

Engineer: "The one about the primary turboencabulator?"

Bureaucracy: "Yes. Your reactor needs it to be certified to the standards laid out in Index 437."

Engineer: "There aren't any turboencabulators in the design. Our design uses retroencabulators. That's how it's so safe; the primary turboencabulator was the primary failure point. There is no primary turboencabulator to certify."

Bureaucracy: "I'm sorry, but we can't accept this design without a certification for a primary turboencabulator. It can't be safe without one. Maybe you should start over?"

Thing is though, how can the engineer claim this new retroencabulator is safe?

If he has documented tests etc, how about going the route of getting the paperwork amended? And if not, should the bureaucrats just take his word that this time it is safe? That was what they were saying with the turboencabulator as well...

I think the problem the parent was getting at is that parts new enough that regulations have not been written are automatically non-viable due to bureaucracy substituting outsourced regulation documents for in-house technical expertise. With the end result of regulators being incapable of making technical decisions that fall outside the already written regulated scenarios.

I would hope that this is less of an issue in nuclear regulation, due to them hopefully having engineering resources on staff. But I do know it's a common problem with less technically focused branches of government.

I'm sure that at the time the Fukushima reactor was built, the general public was assured that its design was perfectly safe. Now you are claiming that it was, in fact, "pants-shittingly unsafe" and the modern designs are much safer. So my question is, why should the general public believe you this time? Because this time, you're really serious?

In comparison to modern reactor designs and the alternatives. Do you think that water heaters are unsafe? Do you think that skyscrapers are unsafe, or bridges, or kitchens, or factories, or electrical wiring? All of those things were, at one time, horrific. When was the last time you seriously worried about your wiring burning your house down?

Asking for "perfectly safe" is idiotic. There's no such thing. There is always a chance that you will get wrapped up in your sheets and strangle in the middle of the night, or that you'll accidentally stab yourself in the wrist with a pencil and bleed out at your desk. Safety is relative. What we have today is better than what we had twenty years ago. What we had twenty years ago was better than what we had forty years ago.

I'd take Fukushima over coal or oil or hydro every day. It took every variation on malice and incompetence that humankind could devise to make it do anything bad, and its "anything" was honestly kind of pathetic compared to the "anythings" for anything else. I'd take a modern reactor over it, but it's take it over the alternatives. And, yes, I'd probably take whatever people have come up with in 30 years over today's technology. Science marches on.