On the one hand, yes it is. On the other hand the general average also does not seem good.
There are many reactors which had similar, but not as bad histories. Kozloduy NPP (BG), Zion Nuclear Power Station (US), Ignalina (LI), Shoreham, Bohunice, Superphénix, …
While reactors which have run without noteworthy problems make up not even half of the total, which is far below anything which should be the norm for public infrastructure.
Lets take Germany as example, which fits quite well due to half of the countries having very lax requirements (DDR) and half having strict ones (West-Germany)
We have 7 Reactors which where built but never operated due to safety concerns (3 in Greifswald)
We have at least 4 sites (with at least 8 reactor blocks) with major issues, besides Greifswald we have e.g. hydrogen explosions (Brunsbüttel), turbine fires (Gundremmingen A), transformer fires (Krümmel). These are just the ones I found with a quick search.
We have another 9 reactor blocks with minor issues like Grundmemmingen B (Bavaria), lets pick this one at random and name the minor incidents: 2 Workers killed by boiling steam explosion (1975), short circuit leading to 3m of contaminated water at 80°C in the building (1977), failed sealing leading to automatic shutdown and repair (2008), failed rods emitting 500-fold the allowed amount of radioactive gases into the atmosphere (2011), another 4 incidents which have not yet been made public and really minor issues like value issues.
We have about 10 with only minor issues. Stretching from Emsland with only 2 known small leaks to Grafenrheinfeld where there were sudden shutdowns and a fire which nearly reached the main reactor but was extinguished in time.
In fact during looking this up I haven’t found a single reactor which ran a significant time without any incident, even if I do not count construction issues which were caught and fixed in time before they resulted in incidents.
On the one hand, yes it is. On the other hand the general average also does not seem good.
There are many reactors which had similar, but not as bad histories. Kozloduy NPP (BG), Zion Nuclear Power Station (US), Ignalina (LI), Shoreham, Bohunice, Superphénix, … While reactors which have run without noteworthy problems make up not even half of the total, which is far below anything which should be the norm for public infrastructure.
Lets take Germany as example, which fits quite well due to half of the countries having very lax requirements (DDR) and half having strict ones (West-Germany)
In fact during looking this up I haven’t found a single reactor which ran a significant time without any incident, even if I do not count construction issues which were caught and fixed in time before they resulted in incidents.