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
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In general, a lot of bad things can happen. We can allow or design for them, but in the end it is always best to build the plant outside of a seismic zone.
In the example of things that *have* gone wrong, remember that power plants are machines, and machines require power. Usually, a nuclear plant powers itself which works great as long as the plant is producing power, if the plant experiences an emergency and its scuttled (no power) that can be a huge problem. So the plants will require power from an outside source in this case. Usually that power can be supplied from the power grid (other plants) but if *that* goes down you’ll have to rely on local generators. Now, if the area experiences both an earthquake but also something like a tsunami which floods/washes away the local generators then you’re triple fucked (Fukushima is an example).
My point being is that modern nuclear powerplants are really, really well engineering with multiple levels of safe guards. But even then, you don’t want to rely on a safeguard to get around a problem, better to avoid the problem in the first place. So yeah, don’t build a powerplant on a fault line.
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