<story><title>Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/safer-nuclear-reactors-are-on-the-way/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jabl</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m slightly skeptical of accident tolerant fuels (ATF).&lt;p&gt;In terms of deaths per kWh generated, nuclear is already the safest form of energy generation we have.&lt;p&gt;Where nuclear fails, and where improvement is desperately needed, is ability to deliver on budget and within schedule.&lt;p&gt;What is NOT needed is minor incremental safety improvements at significant cost (e.g. ATF&amp;#x27;s that the article discusses).&lt;p&gt;Now, more substantial improvements, e.g. non-LWR designs, passive walk-away safety, modular design, etc., I&amp;#x27;m all for those.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acidburnNSA</author><text>Hear hear! I think the nuclear industry struggles with finding a balance between sunk costs (e.g. TRISO fuel development under NGNP, the TREAT reactor, ATR, the BISON fuel performance code), and what advances the nuclear industry really needs to survive and thrive. At a NRC meeting a while ago, one of the members of the ACRS asked pointedly what regulatory relief they expect to get from ATF. No one knew. Is the NRC going to relax a bunch of regs when we have ATF and somehow allow nuclear to be cheaper without compromising safety? No way.&lt;p&gt;We need ways to minimize financing costs during construction, and get the number of staff required at operating plants way down to decrease O&amp;amp;M. My favorite solution? Shipyard-constructed nukes on floating platforms, tugged to locations for power and tugged back to port for maintenance. Solves almost all problems assuming you can get them to operate largely autonomously. In attacks or ship collisions, design it to sink safely and cool itself with seawater. Build in a recovery operation to the design.&lt;p&gt;Also, the nuclear industry really needs to find ways to consolidate effort. There are literally 50+ SMR designs in work right now, and dozens more larger reactors. The industry is wayyy to small to be fighting over limited investor and government money to develop that many reactors in isolation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/safer-nuclear-reactors-are-on-the-way/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jabl</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m slightly skeptical of accident tolerant fuels (ATF).&lt;p&gt;In terms of deaths per kWh generated, nuclear is already the safest form of energy generation we have.&lt;p&gt;Where nuclear fails, and where improvement is desperately needed, is ability to deliver on budget and within schedule.&lt;p&gt;What is NOT needed is minor incremental safety improvements at significant cost (e.g. ATF&amp;#x27;s that the article discusses).&lt;p&gt;Now, more substantial improvements, e.g. non-LWR designs, passive walk-away safety, modular design, etc., I&amp;#x27;m all for those.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Retric</author><text>That’s not accurate.  “Rooftop” solar is minimally dangerous to install, but large scale solar fields on empty land is extremely safe per kWh.&lt;p&gt;PS: Nuclear also has many deaths not generally included in these statistics.  As building and operating a power plant is not the only risky things you need to do to have nuclear power.  Ex: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC4164879&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC4164879&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>