Would a New Nuclear Plant Fare Better than Fukushima?

For a world that was on the brink of a major expansion in nuclear power, a key question raised by the Fukushima Daiichi crisis is this: Would brand-new reactors have fared better in the power outage that triggered dangerous overheating at one of Japan's oldest power plants?

The answer seems to be: Not necessarily.

The nuclear industry has developed reactors that rely on so-called "passive safety" systems that could address the turn of events that occurred in Japan—the loss of power to pump water crucial to cooling radioactive fuel and spent fuel. But these designs are being deployed in only four of the 65 plants under construction worldwide. (Four reactors that are in the site-preparation phase and still awaiting regulatory approval in Georgia and South Carolina in the United States would make that eight of 69 plants.)

The vast majority of plants under construction around the world, 47 in all, are considered Generation II reactor designs—the same 1970s vintage as Fukushima Daiichi, and without integrated passive safety systems.

Nuclear plant operators are quick to point out that even if passive safety was not integrated into reactor design at the outset, these and other improvements have been added to existing reactors or to blueprints for ones under construction. For example, at the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station on the southern California coast, modifications have been made that allow the operators to use a gravity-driven system to circulate the water to cool down the plant for a period of time upon loss of power, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a U.S. industry trade group.

But there are limits to such retrofits. "This is a huge volume of water," says Adrian Heymer, executive director of strategic programs for the NEI. "What happens to that tank in an earthquake?" That's why there's been an effort to integrate a fully passive system from the get-go of the design process, he said.

There is no ready reference list of which plants around the world have been modified with gravity-driven or other safety features. And as for new nuclear plants with integrated passive safety systems, deployment is slow. Nuclear plants require long lead times to gain government approval, obtain financing, and complete planning and construction—making them an anomaly in a world accustomed to lighting-fast changes in technology. In many cases, nuclear plants today are being built with much of the basic technology developed three or four decades ago.
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