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Design for Values in Nuclear Technology

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Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design

Abstract

Safety has always been an important criterion for designing nuclear reactors, but in addition to safety, there are at least four other values that play a key role, namely, security (i.e., sabotage and proliferation), sustainability (i.e., environmental impacts, energy resource availability), economic viability (i.e., embarking on new technology and its continuation), as well as intergenerational justice (i.e., what we leave behind for future generations). This chapter reviews the evolution of generations of nuclear reactors (I, II, III, III, and IV) in terms of these values. We argue that the Best Achievable Nuclear Reactor would maximally satisfy all these criteria, but the safest reactor is not always the most sustainable one, while the reactor that best guarantees resource durability could easily compromise safety and security. Since we cannot meet all these criteria simultaneously, choices and trade-offs need to be made. We highlight these choices by discussing three promising future reactor types, namely, the high-temperature reactor pebble-bed module (HTR-PM), the molten salt-cooled reactor (MSR) and the gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Each year, 500 reactor years would pass, which means that based on the probability of 10−4, the expected number of accident would be 5 × 10−2 (i.e., 500 × 10−4) or simply once in every 20 years.

  2. 2.

    Calculation: 5,000 × 10−4 = 5 × 10−1 or once in every 2 years.

  3. 3.

    This subsection is mainly drawn from the following publication, in which the role of intergenerational justice in nuclear waste management has been extensively discussed (Taebi 2012).

  4. 4.

    For an elaborated discussion of the operationalization of the values in fuel cycles, see (Taebi and Kadak 2010).

  5. 5.

    Please see for an elaborate discussion of this issue (Taebi 2011).

  6. 6.

    This paragraph is partly based on information provided by the South African company, Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (Pty), that built PBMR. See: http://www.pbmr.com/contenthtml/files/File/WhynoChernobyl.pdf.

  7. 7.

    There are two remarks that need to be made. Firstly, it is the authors’ opinion that an MSR would score the best on the sustainability criterion. This is because of the natural abundance and good dispersal of thorium compared to uranium. Secondly, the economic viability is based on a rough estimation made by the authors in which assumptions have been made with regard to the required research funding for the industrialization of these three reactors. HTR-PM with a prototype reactor in China seems to be the farthest ahead in its research, which makes it score best on economic viability, while MSR presumably still requires substantial research.

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Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank Ibo van de Poel as well as Daniela Hanea for their valuable comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft, ∎, ∎

    Behnam Taebi

  2. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, ∎, ∎

    Behnam Taebi

  3. Department of Radiation Science and Technology (RST), Faculty of Applied Sciences, TU Delft, ∎, ∎

    Jan Leen Kloosterman

Authors
  1. Behnam Taebi
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  2. Jan Leen Kloosterman
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Correspondence to Behnam Taebi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Section, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Jeroen van den Hoven

  2. Delft University of Technology Dept. Philosophy, Delft, The Netherlands

    Pieter E. Vermaas

  3. Department of Philosophy Sch. of Techn. Policy & Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Ibo van de Poel

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Taebi, B., Kloosterman, J.L. (2014). Design for Values in Nuclear Technology. In: van den Hoven, J., Vermaas, P., van de Poel, I. (eds) Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6994-6_30-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6994-6_30-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6994-6

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