Will urban siting of nuclear power plants be accepted

Undoubtedly the level of risks associated with nuclear power plants is the decisive siting criterion to be applied to those installations. Since all risk assessments prove the risk of damage associated with nuclear power plants to be extremely small, far below the risks we have been prepared to run until now, objections against urban siting from this point of view may not be too valid. However, more thorough analysis of the risk concept reveals the risks associated with nuclear power plants in the market to be so low because of the extremely low probability of major accidents resulting in damage. The present risk discussion is increasingly shifted to the hypothetical accident concept, the maximum possible amount of damage (residual risk), and the acceptance problem. It is demonstrated that the high-temperature reactor presently under development behaves quite differently in this regard than the commercial light-water reactor. This fact will have a decisive influence on the future development of nuclear power (risk acceptance) in general and on the siting problem in particular. (orig.)