What happens if a big earthquake hits a nuclear reactor?

Question

Just wondering France is planning 14 new reactors what’s the safety protocol if an earth quake hits a reactor and does it do much damage to the environment around it

In: 0

Answer 1

I’m not sure about the reactors that france has planned, but there is also research going in improved nuclear reactors that A) use other fuel, such that you only need to store the radioactive waste for a couple of hundred years instead of a couple of thousand years and B) that have “passive” safeguards that prevent an dessaster like cherbobyl or Fukushima by having a plug that melts if the reactor overheats and then all the radioactive fuel is drained into a reservoir where the reaction stops instead of going “boom”.

[Here](https://youtu.be/ElulEJruhRQ) is a link to a YouTube of PBS spacetime video that explains it (if I recall the content of the video correctly)