Reactor safety and siting

Abstract

First of all I should like to define the scope of this paper, which is to deal with vast subject, abundantly discussed and highly controversial. For few years, problems related to safety and siting of installations in general and reactors in particular, have been the object of dispute between energy promoters and environmentalists, and this has already resulted in considerable amount of literature increasing every day. At the same time, specialists organise many symposia, give many publications on the subject, and to summarize all available material would be huge work (IAEA Symposium, Feb. 1973; WASH. 1250, 1973). Some people believe that the emphasis currently placed on safety matters is out of proportion with their real significance: for them, the hazards involved in the use of energy, the reality of which they do not contest, are not so more important than the risks associated with some other industrial activities, and therefore do not justify the huge expenses which are dedicated to them; correct cost-benefit analysis ought to show that these expenses could be better used elsewhere (1AEA Symposium, May 1973; Congress Foratom, 1973). Some psychologists think that the whole of the present ought to be replaced in psycho-analytic perspective; the violent collective reactions against power plants could represent projection of phantasms generally unconscious over weapons and in that case would just be a come-back of unconscious repressions and confusion of fears (Guedeney and Mandel, 1973). It is out of the question for me to deal with so complex subject on which my competences are limited. I shall therefore omit intentionally the aspect nuclear controversy of this paper, although it does not mean of course that I am underestimating its importance. Besides, its consequences on the technical aspects of the problem cannot be ignored: as matter of fact, some safety studies are directly related to concerns expressed by energy opponents. So I shall restrict myself in this paper to technical matters, without having the ambition to cover the whole field, but attempting to outline some particularly important points.