On the safety and security issues of VHTR from the roundtable discussion

Though the outlook of the new generation nuclear energy reactors is bright, the safety and security issues are still concerning to most of the people. From the roundtable discussion we had, I have gained more insight into this problem.

According to my knowledge of this topic, the safety level of VHTR is promising in most of the situations. It was because VHTR adopts the passive safety design which only depends on physical phenomena such as convection, gravity or resistance to high temperatures, not on functioning of engineered components. The passive safety engineering design excludes any unreliable engineering components or human interventions which are believed to be responsible for the worst nuclear disasters seen in human history. Unlike most positive feedback systems, the VHTR system tends to cool itself down when an abnormal rise of temperature is detected. Another design also prevents local bumping which might harm the apparatus.

Apart from the safety issue, many people are also concerned about the security issue – whether the VHTR would become the victims of terrorism. Taking all the possibilities into account, the terrorists would not be able to damage any nuclear energy reactors around the world in 99.99% situations. As a matter of fact, VHTR is actually among the most “hard” targets, which is much more resistant to terrorist attacks than any other civil installations. Thinking of the worst situation where a largest commercial airplane is hijacked for suicide attack, a group of scientist in America has done a group of experiments. The experiments gave the results that even a fully-fueled large aircraft at its full speed would not cause any critical damage to the reactors.

Therefore, we would be confident enough to conclude that VHTR is safe and secure. Installing VHTRs would not lead to potential disasters that would wipe out the human beings. VHTRs are also free from any malicious attacks by terrorists. VHTR is one of the promising energy sources in the future.