Surprising Science — March 30, 2011

Predicting Nuclear Accidents

No single analysis can discern which nuclear power plants in the U.S. are most at risk for a disaster, but the probabilities of an accident damaging a reactor core have been roughly penciled out.

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Predicting accidents that are extremely unlikely to happen is now the business of American nuclear regulators. “The American people, and the regulators whose job it is to protect them from a catastrophic nuclear accident, are watching the unfolding events at a complex of crippled reactors in Japan with foreboding and an overriding question: Can it happen here? The answer—probably not—from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is meant to reassure. … ‘We can never say that that could never happen here,’ said Anthony R. Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute.”

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