Frank von Hippel reminds us that what’s really dangerous about nuclear power plants is a factor located hundreds if not thousands of miles from any reactor: regulatory capture.

Therefore, perhaps the most important thing to do in light of the Fukushima disaster is to change the industry-regulator relationship. It has become customary for administrations not to nominate, and the Senate not to confirm, commissioners whom the industry regards as “anti-nuclear” — which includes anyone who has expressed any criticism whatsoever of industry practices. The commission has an excellent staff; what it needs is more aggressive political leadership.

Fukushima also shows why we need to develop reactors that are more inherently safe. Almost all the world’s power reactors, including those at Fukushima, are descended from the much smaller reactors developed in the 1950s by the United States for submarines. As we saw in the Fukushima accident, they depend on pumps to keep them from catastrophic failure, a major weak point. New designs less dependent on pumps have been developed, but there has not yet been enough research to make certain that they would work effectively

We need a regulatory outlook that would prioritize research into those alterrnate designs!

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 8:00 pm.