[korantu]

Modern nuclear plants can withstand seismic activity.

Current nuclear plants just dont fail in such way as to "threaten all of Europe and Africa"

[rglullis]

How "current" was Fukushima, and why could they detect traces of radioactive material in California?

I'm not against nuclear, but can we please not build them in places that present unnecessary risks?

[petre]

Please do read about the NuScale reactor. That one is modern, with passive circulation and cooling.

One can also build some of them on a barge and moor it over deep water just like a deepwater oil rig, where it will be protected from earthquakes. The US is currently designing one, the Russians already have one but that's not an option anymore.

Also, smaller the Greek islands are not big energy consumers. A wind farm, solar plus storage might be enough for most if them. Also use the surplus to make hydrogen and store it for burning in a gas generator. Some of them are near the shore and they're already powered by cable.

[rglullis]

That does not really answer my question, does it?

Of all the possible places to build nuclear plants, why go put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine and tons of seismic activity?

No matter how favorable the odds, why play those when there are places that could be even better?

[olivermarks]

I suspect you, like many, are fixated on the idea that solar/wind power is viable as primary energy sources and therefore haven't been taking nuclear seriously.

Assuming the future successful invention and deployment of battery power storage to provide a consistent 11,000 Megawatt-hours per day (a fairly typical large city supply amount), what do you think would happen to those enormous ganged up batteries in an earthquake?

https://battlebornbatteries.com/lithium-ion-battery-puncture...

[rglullis]

> fixated on the idea that solar/wind power is viable as primary energy sources

No, absolutely not. I said in the first comments, not against nuclear. What I am against is pushing for unproven designs facing avoidable risks.

[olivermarks]

Fukishima was a giant 1960's era GE nuclear plant. Like everything else in the technology world there has been huge evolution since then.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-hope...

[rglullis]

And the Titanic was also considered an unsinkable ship...

Sure technology has improved and it is safer, but you know can make it even safer still? Not putting them on places with lots of seismic activity.

[olivermarks]

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-key-resilient-features-... I suspect small modular reactor units will be safer and can be put back into operation a lot faster and with less fire risk than current Rube Goldberg grid contraptions

[korantu]

having detected traces says that we are very good at detecting traces. It does not mean "threaten all of Europe and Africa".

The death and destruction from tsunami itself was several orders of magnitude more than from nuclear station malfunction. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...

[rglullis]

Why put it there if it is an avoidable risk?

[djbebs]

Same reason why you still breathe despite it being a vector for airborn illnesses.

Because whenbyou do the math of cost benefit, it falls squarely on the benefits side.

[rglullis]

"Not breathing" is not an option.

"Not building on places with seismic activity" is.

[bjoli]

I am not necessarily pro-nuclear, but one of the big problems with Fukushima is that it didn't ventilate the hydrogen that was created during the meltdown. It was the hydrogen that created the explosion in reactor for that made it go from bad to ultra-shit.

it has been standard from the late 60s.

[bjoli]

I seem to be confusing nuclear disasters. Anyway, the explosions in Fukushima could have been prevented with hydrogen ventilation chimneys that had been standard equipment since the early 70s.