Quake has nuclear lessons for UK: energy minister

[Aurora]

AFP - 13/03/11

Lessons need to be learned from the problems facing Japanese nuclear reactors after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, Energy Minister Chris Hhune said on Sunday.

"I?m asking our own nuclear regulator, or safety authorities, to look very carefully at the Japanese experience to learn any lessons that we can, both for our own existing nuclear reactions and for any new nuclear programme, because safety is absolutely the number one priority for us in all our energy sources, and that has to be the case with this one as well," Huhne told BBC television.

"We have to learn the lessons from what has gone on in Japan and make sure we take them on board."

Huhne said there were differences between the Japanese and British nuclear programmes.

"We don?t have type of reactor that is involved in this particular incident, in the UK, and nor are we proposing that it should be part of any new nuclear programme," he said.

"And in addition, of course, there is a very big difference in that we?re, frankly, amazingly lucky that we don?t live in a seismically active earthquake zone like Japan."

Huhne was asked about public reaction to the disaster in Japan which comes as Britain is about to relaunch its nuclear programme.

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[PS_RalphW]

I'm not in favour of new nuclear in the UK, but i'm not sure that the Japanese problems have much impact on the UK (beyond public opinion).

The japanese reactors are an old design, which does not have passive cooling built in. They need pumped cooling, and building them on a Tsunami-prone coast was (with 100% hindsight) just setting them up for catastrophic failure.

So far, none of the reactors has resulted in major radiation release. If the core containment holds, there will be no disaster.

Perhaps the lesson to learn is that we need to exceed protection against the 1 in 100 year event.