I am well out of my specific expertise here, but consider these facts for a less frightening interpretation that would not sell newspapers…
• There are reactors in operation that were designed in the age of slide rules. Even in 1980, $5 million "supercomputers" ($15M in today's dollars) were less powerful than my phone.
• In "An Overview of Radiation Embrittlement Modeling for Reactor Vessel Steels" 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=quzCvTWt9CMC&pg=PA99... the oldest work in the bibliography specifically on embrittlement that I see is from the 1970s with the bulk being in the 1980s.
• When faced with uncertainty, engineers set the limits high enough to encompass the worst case.
• When faced with approximation, engineers set the limits to encompass the error of the calculation.
A poorly understood phenomenon coupled with primitive, coarse grained models (in order to be computable by the existing resources) is going to get you an overly conservative operating range.
25 years of studying what actually happens in live reactors, 25 years of theoretical studying, and unimaginably fast computers for verifying models and simulating situations is going to get you a different answer to the question.
I wish there had been a careful reexamination of standards based on new knowledge.
More likely is that bringing old plants up to standard was too expensive. Or even worse, taking them off the grid.
In my view this is the real danger of nuclear power: New plants are probably quite safe but they are very expensive to maintain when they get old. On the other hand, if you relax the standard they are more profitable the older they get. So at some point you end up with a lot of old plants that are extremely expensive to maintain or shut down.
On the other hand, the commercial pressures of operating complex metal and concrete structures way beyond their design-life may lead to pressure to relax standards, that when combined with aging materials, lead to a chain of events that creates a serious accident.
We've had quite a few very narrow escapes in the US. Here's just one:
Davis-Besse
http://events.nace.org/library/corrosion/NuclearIndustry/nuc...
>High pressure inside the reactor vessel pushed the stainless steel outward into the cavity formed by the boric acid. The stainless steel bent but did not break. Cooling water remained inside the reactor vessel not because of thick carbon steel but due to a thin layer of stainless steel.
Personally, I'll support nuclear power if based on a reasonably clean low-waste producing technology, and if it can be proven that a safe passive shut-down is possible under station black-out conditions, without human intervention.
• There are reactors in operation that were designed in the age of slide rules. Even in 1980, $5 million "supercomputers" ($15M in today's dollars) were less powerful than my phone.
• In "An Overview of Radiation Embrittlement Modeling for Reactor Vessel Steels" 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=quzCvTWt9CMC&pg=PA99... the oldest work in the bibliography specifically on embrittlement that I see is from the 1970s with the bulk being in the 1980s.
• When faced with uncertainty, engineers set the limits high enough to encompass the worst case.
• When faced with approximation, engineers set the limits to encompass the error of the calculation.
A poorly understood phenomenon coupled with primitive, coarse grained models (in order to be computable by the existing resources) is going to get you an overly conservative operating range.
25 years of studying what actually happens in live reactors, 25 years of theoretical studying, and unimaginably fast computers for verifying models and simulating situations is going to get you a different answer to the question.