As I have written before, nuclear power plants must be designed to be fail-safe, if not fail-proof. To be fail-safe means that if an accident takes place, the system fails to a safe state. A simple example of this is an electrical fuse. If too much current tries to flow across the fuse, the fuse melts and stops the flow of electricity. Future nuclear plants must be designed in a way that provides the public with an absolute degree of confidence that they can’t have catastrophic accidents.
Public expectations may be that nuclear designs need to be fail-proof, but there are many reasons why that metric will never be achieved. The most fundamental reason is that we simply can’t guard against every possible outcome. Thus, we try to mitigate possible consequences, and implement fail-safe designs.
There are those who will still reject the idea of nuclear power under any circumstances. But there are consequences from such a stance. Some will idealistically believe that renewables will fill the world’s growing power demands, but in reality that’s just not happening.
Thus, whether you like it or not, absolute rejection of nuclear power almost certainly means higher global carbon dioxide emissions. That’s a high price to pay if you are concerned about the impacts of climate change.
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