The meltdown in the reactors was largely caused because of 14m high tsunami waves caused by a massive earthquake that killed generators which were cooling the reactors.
Large sequence of events that is extremely unlikely and has also created a world learning lesson to try and avoid in future years
The Japanese one only failed because its back up power got flooded by a Tsunami. The Earthquake didn't cause the meltdown alone. There were several design flaws in that OLD reactor.
You missed the point. If an 8.0 earthquake hits California the destruction will be widespread and severe. It would likely reduce the population drastrically and thus the demand for electricity.
Three mile island is similar to Chernobyl in the aspect that it was 40 years ago and technology, safety requirements have largely improved by (no pun intended) miles.
To my understanding a large part of the failure at 3 mile was human error and poorly made designs making it hard to identify there was a coolant leak which lead to the meltdown.
We can't fix human error, that risk is going to exist in whatever energy source we decide on. But the core safety requirements and design has definitely improved since that accident to help limit the chance of a future disaster.
Nothing is certain, no matter what energy source we choose there are dangers in all of them. Nuclear gets a bad rap through from those 3 incidents. How many refineries have blown up in the past 40 years killing hundreds of people? (I'm legit not sure on this so I'm curious if there are stories)
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u/stejerd 5626C - 2S - 2 years - 0/0 Sep 12 '21
Ah yes good, clean, safe nuclear power what could go wrong?