Nuclear Safety Push To Be Softened After US Objections

mdsolar writes with news that the U.S. objects to a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety put forward by Switzerland. The United States looks set to succeed in watering down a proposal for tougher legal standards aimed at boosting global nuclear safety, according to senior diplomats. Diplomatic wrangling will come to a head at a 77-nation meeting in Vienna next month that threatens to expose divisions over required safety standards and the cost of meeting them, four years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Switzerland has put forward a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), arguing stricter standards could help avoid a repeat of Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami sparked triple nuclear meltdowns, forced more than 160,000 people to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.

Comments

Re:Regulation, more regulation, only lawyers win

[Boronx]

They need to find a way to keep stupid people from running the plants. Fukushima's problems were severe, but the meltdowns were all preventable. That's the dirty little secret that Japan doesn't talk about. Any competent nuclear plant operator could have shut down Fukushima safely.

Re:Regulation, more regulation, only lawyers win

[thegarbz]

If you went to build anything these days with 1970s era thinking, 1970s era technology and 1970s era safety standards you would be denied commercial insurance.

The problem is not that the numbers look bad, its that the numbers are horrendously skewed compared with knowledge of nuclear power generation. It's like saying cars are incredible death traps and thus refusing to build new cars with crumple zones, seat belts, and air bags.

The process / power industry has evolved, the designs have evolved, but nothing has been built. So any statistics you use about x number of meltdowns out of x reactors basically need to be adjusted for 1970s era thinking. And we did a lot of mistakes back then across all industries.

I reject the notion that if you built a nuclear reactor now that is has a 1.33% of catastrophic meltdown over 40 years.