Fantastic writing! This should be must read for anyone interested in NP, clean power, real safety, policies that work etc. Always wondered how this PRA come to be as they are, and there was always tingling feeling that it must be easy to get any desired number. And then forget about something important which will happen in real life.
I also suspect that other forms of "catastrophe", such as forest fires and earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and tornados have a similar set of analytical limits in regard to risk assessments - except that they tend to be more frequent and seldom under our ability to control - except perhaps to prepare and mitigate their impacts [the folks in NW NC might not agree with this, however, while most of us in Florida are pretty happy with the DeSantis et al. responses to the recent set of huricanes. Practice, practice, practice!!!].
So we are basically hoping to have few serious failures, but if/when we do, then we are also essentially saying it is the insurance companies who are at risk of continuing to exist, or not. Those companies with the most realistic (or luckiest?) risk, premium, and payout assessments will remain in the market, the rest will fail and cease to exist. Or the government will end up as the final back-stop.
With wide personal experience, locally and nationally, we have some appreciation for the benefits of personal auto travel. We understand the substantial interconnectedness to implement the desired and required infrastructure and how that supports our very very complex economic and personal lives. So we in fact put up with 30 to 40 thousand auto accident deaths per year, plus other levels of non-fatal impact, to retain that benefit. We fly around the country and the world with even greater safety than driving (so I understand).
So we need to find a way to promote nuclear as even some substantial sub-level of risk even compared to flying in airplanes. I.e., there will be no yearly loss of life in the 30K to 40K range, or the few hundred range. Possibly, at most a few hundred lives lost over a 100 year period?
Are there any national level politicians who understand this that we can help support? I suppose state level talent could also merit such support given installations are local, after a fashion.
Congratulations. You nailed it by laying out sound principles & indisputable logic. I have tried to summarize & fill in the blanks of what I understood: Not in any order:
NPP Technology "Fitness for Purpose" Principles:
1. Design for simplicity
2. Design for consequence mitigation & asset hardening
3. Tie exclusion zone to worst accident case after PRA rationalization. Set insurance rates as a function of Exclusion Zone radius.
4. Independently Monitor Operations to ensure no encroachment upon Defense-in-Depth & PRA envelope
2. Tighten Monitoring to ensure no encroachment upon Defense-in-Depth & PRA envelopes. This includes any interdependencies between envelopes. Set triggers to review D-in-D & PRA "envelopes"
Fantastic writing! This should be must read for anyone interested in NP, clean power, real safety, policies that work etc. Always wondered how this PRA come to be as they are, and there was always tingling feeling that it must be easy to get any desired number. And then forget about something important which will happen in real life.
Ditto on msxc's comment.
I also suspect that other forms of "catastrophe", such as forest fires and earthquakes and hurricanes and floods and tornados have a similar set of analytical limits in regard to risk assessments - except that they tend to be more frequent and seldom under our ability to control - except perhaps to prepare and mitigate their impacts [the folks in NW NC might not agree with this, however, while most of us in Florida are pretty happy with the DeSantis et al. responses to the recent set of huricanes. Practice, practice, practice!!!].
So we are basically hoping to have few serious failures, but if/when we do, then we are also essentially saying it is the insurance companies who are at risk of continuing to exist, or not. Those companies with the most realistic (or luckiest?) risk, premium, and payout assessments will remain in the market, the rest will fail and cease to exist. Or the government will end up as the final back-stop.
With wide personal experience, locally and nationally, we have some appreciation for the benefits of personal auto travel. We understand the substantial interconnectedness to implement the desired and required infrastructure and how that supports our very very complex economic and personal lives. So we in fact put up with 30 to 40 thousand auto accident deaths per year, plus other levels of non-fatal impact, to retain that benefit. We fly around the country and the world with even greater safety than driving (so I understand).
So we need to find a way to promote nuclear as even some substantial sub-level of risk even compared to flying in airplanes. I.e., there will be no yearly loss of life in the 30K to 40K range, or the few hundred range. Possibly, at most a few hundred lives lost over a 100 year period?
Are there any national level politicians who understand this that we can help support? I suppose state level talent could also merit such support given installations are local, after a fashion.
Congratulations. You nailed it by laying out sound principles & indisputable logic. I have tried to summarize & fill in the blanks of what I understood: Not in any order:
NPP Technology "Fitness for Purpose" Principles:
1. Design for simplicity
2. Design for consequence mitigation & asset hardening
3. Tie exclusion zone to worst accident case after PRA rationalization. Set insurance rates as a function of Exclusion Zone radius.
4. Independently Monitor Operations to ensure no encroachment upon Defense-in-Depth & PRA envelope
Operations:
1. Tighten Monitoring for complexity & fragility i.e., non-normal states, interdependencies, unpredicted behaviour
2. Tighten Monitoring to ensure no encroachment upon Defense-in-Depth & PRA envelopes. This includes any interdependencies between envelopes. Set triggers to review D-in-D & PRA "envelopes"