Exactly how safe are nuclear power plants?
With nuclear power, safety depends on much the same factors as in any comparable industry: intelligent planning, proper design with conservative margins and back-up systems, high-quality components and a well-developed safety culture in operations. The operating lives of reactors depend on maintaining their safety margin.In avoiding such accidents the industry has been very successful. In over 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial operation in 32 countries, there have been only three major accidents to nuclear power plants - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima - the second being of little relevance to reactor design outside the old Soviet bloc. (By way of contrast to western safety engineering, the Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment structure like those used in the West or in post-1980 Soviet designs.)
With nuclear power, safety depends on much the same factors as in any comparable industry: intelligent planning, proper design with conservative margins and back-up systems, high-quality components and a well-developed safety culture in operations. The operating lives of reactors depend on maintaining their safety margin.In avoiding such accidents the industry has been very successful. In over 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial operation in 32 countries, there have been only three major accidents to nuclear power plants - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima - the second being of little relevance to reactor design outside the old Soviet bloc. (By way of contrast to western safety engineering, the Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment structure like those used in the West or in post-1980 Soviet designs.)