The Nuclear Industry’s Bad Safety Analysis

One bad analysis tops them all and it was the original model that 1970s reactors were licensed by.

The one threat considered for probabilistic analysis was bursting of the pressure vessel, something which almost never happens because we know how to design and operate pressure vessels. (Hundreds of storage tanks get sucked in for every pressure vessel failure.)

In the 1980s it was determined that the most likely failure mode was a power outage at the station which would prevent it from cooling the reactor after a shutdown.

Had there been some spare diesel generators staged inland, these could have been helicoptered in and the damage greatly reduced if not eliminated. Post 911 there was a safety review of nuke plants that introduced this and other reforms.