I agree with your main point that reactor designs today are safer designs than those from the 1960s. Though you also wrote:
>...Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.
All indications are that much was learned by industry and the NRC after TMI:
"...The NRC said the TMI accident also led to increased identification, analysis and publication of plant performance information, and recognising human performance as “a critical component of plant safety”.
Key indicators of plant safety performance in the US have improved dramatically. Those indicators show:
• The average number of significant reactor events over the past 20 years has dropped to nearly zero.
• Today there are far fewer, much less frequent and lower risk events that could lead to a reactor-core damage.
• The average number of times safety systems have had to be activated is about one-tenth of what it was 22 years ago.
• Radiation exposure levels to plant workers have steadily decreased to about one-sixth of the 1985 exposure levels and are well below national limits.
• The average number of unplanned reactor shutdowns has decreased by nearly ten-fold. In 2007 there were about 52 shutdowns compared to about 530 shutdowns in 1985."
> All indications are that much was learned by industry and the NRC after TMI
That's true, the industry did learn a lot from TMI--and it made no difference, because it was already too late as far as public opinion was concerned. The US government and the media spun TMI as showing that nuclear power just wasn't safe enough, and the public believed it. As a result, we have nuclear generating about 20% of US electricity, when it could be more like 75%. Imagine if the US had not had to buy any foreign oil at all after, say, 1990.
>...Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.
All indications are that much was learned by industry and the NRC after TMI:
"...The NRC said the TMI accident also led to increased identification, analysis and publication of plant performance information, and recognising human performance as “a critical component of plant safety”. Key indicators of plant safety performance in the US have improved dramatically. Those indicators show:
• The average number of significant reactor events over the past 20 years has dropped to nearly zero.
• Today there are far fewer, much less frequent and lower risk events that could lead to a reactor-core damage.
• The average number of times safety systems have had to be activated is about one-tenth of what it was 22 years ago.
• Radiation exposure levels to plant workers have steadily decreased to about one-sixth of the 1985 exposure levels and are well below national limits.
• The average number of unplanned reactor shutdowns has decreased by nearly ten-fold. In 2007 there were about 52 shutdowns compared to about 530 shutdowns in 1985."
https://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2009/03/23/three-mile-is...