Comment by majormajor
3 years ago
The odds definitely aren't that straightforward.
Experiments and development in the 1950s. First commercial plant in 58.
Further growth in 60s and 70s. Including deadly accidents like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 in 1961 - protests grew in 60s and 70s too.
Three Mile Island 1979.
Chernobyl 1986.
Fukushima 2011.
That 25-year gap between Chernobyl and Fukushima - and the extraordinary circumstances causing Fukushima vs the previous incidents - suggests that safety improved A LOT over the 60-odd years between 1958 and now.
True, it has. But, the failure rate is not zero. And more plants mean they will happen more often. I’m just pointing out that it’s rational to worry about a small probability high consequence disaster.
Nuclear fission is a reaction with a positive feedback loop, making it naturally unstable, and requires some mechanism to create a negative feedback of greater magnitude to make it stable. And that requires some kind of active machinery to function properly. If that machinery fails, then the feedback loop becomes positive again. Machines can always fail, so I doubt that fission can ever be made completely safe.