ABSTRACT

The Fukushima accident of 2011 pulled von Hippel back into the reactor-safety world. He was invited to join a Congressionally-mandated four-year study of the lessons that could be learned from the Fukushima accident to improve the safety of US nuclear plants. During that study he learned more about both a much worse accident that almost happened at Fukushima, and about how the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission had come to use “risk-informed regulation” as a way to avoid requiring costly safety upgrades opposed by US nuclear utilities. He campaigned unsuccessfully at both the national and state levels to move the nuclear utilities away from densely packed spent fuel pools by moving fuel that had cooled for more than five years to dry-cask storage. He also promoted on-site dry-cask storage in Japan and South Korea as an alternative to reprocessing. This last chapter ends with some stories of his father, also a physicist, who would not be intimidated and who was a leader in the development of the field of materials science and engineering.

摘要

2011年的福岛事故使冯·希佩尔重返反应堆安全世界。他应邀参加了一项由国会授权的为期四年的研究，该研究可以从福岛核事故中汲取教训，以提高美国核电厂的安全性。在该研究中，他不仅了解了几乎在福岛发生的一次更为严重的事故，而且还了解了美国核监管委员会如何利用“风险知情的监管”来避免要求美国核电公司反对进行昂贵的安全升级的方法。他在国家和州两级进行的竞选活动均以失败告终，他通过将已经冷却了五年以上的燃料转移到干桶储存中，从而将核电设施从密集包装的乏燃料池中移出。他还促进了日本和韩国在现场的干木桶存储，作为后处理的替代方法。