First there is a reason for that, as all major incident and even many minor incidents (see above) release radioactivity. Often into the environment in very minor cases only into the reactor building and the workers.
Secondly its wrong. Yes incidents do happen in normal plant too. But any remotely major ones also make it into the news. Actually they do it more often as the plants are not as remote and as huge that you wouldn’t notice them. As you can see 4 incidents haven’t been made public in Grundmemmingen B, I don’t know of a single one which has not been disclosed for years with coal/gas plants.
Lets pick a random sample of 10 German coal & gas plants from the Wikipedia list:
(Kraftwerk Bremen-Mittelsbüren[49]Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Bremen (GKB)[52]Industriekraftwerk Bremerhaven[1]Industriekraftwerk Breuberg[53]Egger Kraftwerk Brilon[1]Kraftwerk Burghausen[1]Industriekraftwerk Marl[1][2]Kraftwerk Clauen[1]Heizkraftwerk Cottbus[55][2]GTKW Darmstadt[57] )
We have 8 with no incidents at all, notable Bremen-Mittelsbüren which runs since 1964!
Special mention also for Marl where the plant didn’t have issues, but the chemical factories around it, oh boy!
We have 2 with Issues, a complete list:
Fire in turbine, nobody hurt (Clauen)
boiler explosion 3 hurt, 2 dead (Brilon)
So in total you have less issues than with a single average atomic reactor and only 20% of the list had issues. Why is that so? First these systems are simple. The only contain comparatively few parts, you can access almost everything for inspection without special gear and notice and fix any faults before they even have a chance to become a problem. Secondly they deal with lower extremes. The steam circuit has less pressure, the power for the transformers is lower.
This also hold for the huge ones, e.g. the 4 Datteln plants where only Datteln 4 had a major fire incident with no deaths. The oldest one running 1964-2014, longer than any atomic reactor in Germany.
When you look to wind turbines incidents are even more rare. We have currently about 28600 wind turbines in Germany, of these 129 had incidents like damage to the blades. 8 towers collapsed so 0.5% with issues and 0.02% with major ones. (And these issues concentrate on the first turbines built)
First there is a reason for that, as all major incident and even many minor incidents (see above) release radioactivity. Often into the environment in very minor cases only into the reactor building and the workers.
Secondly its wrong. Yes incidents do happen in normal plant too. But any remotely major ones also make it into the news. Actually they do it more often as the plants are not as remote and as huge that you wouldn’t notice them. As you can see 4 incidents haven’t been made public in Grundmemmingen B, I don’t know of a single one which has not been disclosed for years with coal/gas plants.
Lets pick a random sample of 10 German coal & gas plants from the Wikipedia list: (Kraftwerk Bremen-Mittelsbüren[49]Gemeinschaftskraftwerk Bremen (GKB)[52]Industriekraftwerk Bremerhaven[1]Industriekraftwerk Breuberg[53]Egger Kraftwerk Brilon[1]Kraftwerk Burghausen[1]Industriekraftwerk Marl[1][2]Kraftwerk Clauen[1]Heizkraftwerk Cottbus[55][2]GTKW Darmstadt[57] )
We have 8 with no incidents at all, notable Bremen-Mittelsbüren which runs since 1964! Special mention also for Marl where the plant didn’t have issues, but the chemical factories around it, oh boy!
We have 2 with Issues, a complete list:
So in total you have less issues than with a single average atomic reactor and only 20% of the list had issues. Why is that so? First these systems are simple. The only contain comparatively few parts, you can access almost everything for inspection without special gear and notice and fix any faults before they even have a chance to become a problem. Secondly they deal with lower extremes. The steam circuit has less pressure, the power for the transformers is lower.
This also hold for the huge ones, e.g. the 4 Datteln plants where only Datteln 4 had a major fire incident with no deaths. The oldest one running 1964-2014, longer than any atomic reactor in Germany.
When you look to wind turbines incidents are even more rare. We have currently about 28600 wind turbines in Germany, of these 129 had incidents like damage to the blades. 8 towers collapsed so 0.5% with issues and 0.02% with major ones. (And these issues concentrate on the first turbines built)