On the contrary, most of the arguments for increased nuclear safety have actually come from the nuclear industry.
The whole classification of commercial nuclear power plants into multiple generations, for instance, with the big difference between each gen being safety - that came straight from the nuclear industry.
When the nuclear renaissance of the 2000s happened, it was the nuclear industry who chose not to put forward existing battle-tested designs, but instead insisted on the "newer, larger, cheaper (hahaha), safer" GenIII+ (eg. EPR) with all their concomitant delays and cost-overruns.
And now those have proven to be a yet another nuclear boondoggle, we're hearing about SMRs - and, once again, it's the nuclear industry who are talking about increased safety (see the last SMR story that made the HN front page as a prime example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477559).
The "nuclear isn't economic" folk aren't pushing any of this. They'd be happy enough with something like a Westinghouse SNUPPS or the French P4/N4, lightly modernised with the best of the post-Chernobyl enhancements (see Sizewell B in the UK as a good example) if only the price was right. Those are well-understood, fairly reliable, have no known major safety issues, and are generally good enough. Trouble is that the price isn't right - even those old GenII designs would still cost far too much to build and operate.
And the nuclear industry know this. They have no answer to the "it's too expensive" argument so are advertising increased safety as the only selling point they've got.
Comments
On the contrary, most of the arguments for increased nuclear safety have actually come from the nuclear industry.
The whole classification of commercial nuclear power plants into multiple generations, for instance, with the big difference between each gen being safety - that came straight from the nuclear industry.
When the nuclear renaissance of the 2000s happened, it was the nuclear industry who chose not to put forward existing battle-tested designs, but instead insisted on the "newer, larger, cheaper (hahaha), safer" GenIII+ (eg. EPR) with all their concomitant delays and cost-overruns.
And now those have proven to be a yet another nuclear boondoggle, we're hearing about SMRs - and, once again, it's the nuclear industry who are talking about increased safety (see the last SMR story that made the HN front page as a prime example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477559).
The "nuclear isn't economic" folk aren't pushing any of this. They'd be happy enough with something like a Westinghouse SNUPPS or the French P4/N4, lightly modernised with the best of the post-Chernobyl enhancements (see Sizewell B in the UK as a good example) if only the price was right. Those are well-understood, fairly reliable, have no known major safety issues, and are generally good enough. Trouble is that the price isn't right - even those old GenII designs would still cost far too much to build and operate.
And the nuclear industry know this. They have no answer to the "it's too expensive" argument so are advertising increased safety as the only selling point they've got.