> The radioactive materials stay fully encased for their entire life and beyond. It's a very robust, strong fuel that's designed to make sure it indefinitely keeps the fuel safely inside the pellet.
> Some of the main differences that the MMR has from conventional nuclear plants is that the reactor cannot meltdown as the heat is passively released into the environment, does not need any active systems to remove heat, and requires no on-site fuel storage, handling, or processing.
This reactor would have been completely unaffected by the events at Fukushima.
Crappy reactors from the 70s are the only financially viable reactors these days. Also the ones Germany is being raked across the coals for trying to shut down.
But some 18 years before the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami of some 15.7 metres at the Daiichi site. However, this had not yet led to any major action by either the plant operator, Tepco, or government regulators, notably the Nuclear & Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). Discussion was ongoing, but action minimal. The tsunami countermeasures could also have been reviewed in accordance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines which required taking into account high tsunami levels, but NISA continued to allow the Fukushima plant to operate without sufficient countermeasures such as moving the backup generators up the hill, sealing the lower part of the buildings, and having some back-up for seawater pumps, despite clear warnings.
We already know that the Chernobyl incident was due to even more egregious human error and poor planning.
Pretty much every country with civilian nuclear energy had some big scandals or incidents around them[1]. Humans just can't be trusted to build a 100% safe process.
[1] Just to name a few: Three Mile Island (US), Sellafield (UK), Brunsbüttel (DE), Saint-Laurent (FR)
Australia absolutely would have egregious chains of human failure and bad planning.
You've only got to look at the present state of this country to see that that is how we, evidently, prefer to do things.
No, coal plants have spent-fuel disposal problems due to "human error"/poor management too. This one cost over $1b to clean up and required them to scrape off the topsoil and rendered the area essentially uninhabitable, just like fukushima. TVA ended up having to buy out the inhabitants and move them elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
And the fun part is: that shit is actually radioactive too. Coal plants put out as much radioactive waste as nuclear plants do... but they put it straight into the air, and then put a bunch more into spent-fuel pools besides.
I don’t have an issue with nuclear power but IMO the industry should be forced to pay for a ~1T insurance policy to avoid bad incentives rather than the government simply taking on the associated risks.
Good idea; let's start by applying that incentive to the externalities generated by the fossil fuel industry first though, so that the playing field is fair.
Ed: spelling
Unfortunately, fossil fuel externalities cross national boarders which creates perverse incentives. Do only price in the costs to your own country or accept an economic disadvantage? Essentially countries need to start doing pollution tariffs not just taxing externalities.
Economically the correct choices are obvious, but politics is rarely so simple.
This is seriously glossing over details. The cost of pumped hydro is highly geographically dependent. If you happen to have an alpine lake handy, then yes it can be cheap. But building pumped hydro in flat terrain is much more expensive.
The additional pumped storage needs of solar and wind are more than offset by their vastly lower cost.
If nuclear power could compete on a level playing field it'd be great but it sucks up subsidies like nothing else and puts the taxpayer is fully on the hook for dealing with all and any 800 billion dollar fukishima events.