I'm currently finishing plowing through UC Berkeley's risk management for nuclear engineers course (the one they pulled for some lame reason (UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts: Search Courses and Events), but I managed to download all the videos beforehand).
Here what I can say (as a "knowledgeable person"):
Nuclear power plant can be engineered to acceptable levels of risk by pretty much any standards. Term "risk" I use to cover both risk to life, health and financial stuff.
The problem is that there is a fine print to that evaluation. It's all calculated under explicit assumption that human factors such as incompetence, corruption and outright sabotage are under control (unfortunately as we all know that this is not the case.) Adding humans to the equation transforms system from "complicated" to "complex" and thus makes the problem intractable by today's means.
As engineer I used to get pissed when someone doubts our ability to make stuff. But I honestly started to have some doubts...
(especially after they classified the risk assessment of spent fuel pool at Indian Point)
Here what I can say (as a "knowledgeable person"):
Nuclear power plant can be engineered to acceptable levels of risk by pretty much any standards. Term "risk" I use to cover both risk to life, health and financial stuff.
The problem is that there is a fine print to that evaluation. It's all calculated under explicit assumption that human factors such as incompetence, corruption and outright sabotage are under control (unfortunately as we all know that this is not the case.) Adding humans to the equation transforms system from "complicated" to "complex" and thus makes the problem intractable by today's means.
As engineer I used to get pissed when someone doubts our ability to make stuff. But I honestly started to have some doubts...
(especially after they classified the risk assessment of spent fuel pool at Indian Point)