The facility contains 26 nuclear reactors of various sizes and a huge accumulation of radioactive material.
Other reactors of similar design, called pressurized water reactors, have had steam generator problems.
The Nuclear Regulatory Agency has in hand or expects applications to build 34 reactors, of which seven are European pressurized water reactors of the Flamanville type — and, unlike current American reactors, allow output to vary to meet fluctuating demand.
For example, reactors of this type can be smaller than conventional uranium reactors, partly thanks to their low-pressure operation.
Another nuclear engineer with long experience in reactors of this type, who now works for a government agency, was emphatic.
That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate.Most American nuclear reactors are pressurised-water reactors of this type.
Another question is whether the vents that are installed at most American reactors of the Fukushima type are adequate.
The United States has 104 operating reactors, of which 35 are boiling water reactors and 69 are pressurized water.
But NRG, of Princeton, N.J., applied in October to build two reactors of a type known as advanced boiling-water reactors at a site in Texas.
Twenty years later, the country purchases electricity from France, which is eighty per cent nuclear, and now the Italians have decided to build new reactors of their own.
Worse still, it had deprived four of the six reactors of the power required to cool the nuclear fuel rods inside.
