My guess is that nuclear waste production and chance of reactor meltdown are very weakly correlated. Both are decreased if the reactor is designed by a particularly conscientious group of researchers.
My expectation would be the opposite, a slight anticorrelation.(after further thought this changed, see below)
I would expect most reactor designs to be pretty heavily studied and worked on, making the conscientiousness factor reasonably small.
In two designs that were approximately contemporary I would therefore expect to see a tradeoff between different design goals (ie. waste production, chance of meltdown, fuel efficiency, total output, cost of production etc.)
Actually, no, that wouldn’t necessarily result in an anticorrelation, in fact it would likely result in a correlation, because waste production and meltdown chance both fall under the same supergoal (environmental safety)
My guess is that nuclear waste production and chance of reactor meltdown are very weakly correlated. Both are decreased if the reactor is designed by a particularly conscientious group of researchers.
My expectation would be the opposite, a slight anticorrelation. (after further thought this changed, see below)
I would expect most reactor designs to be pretty heavily studied and worked on, making the conscientiousness factor reasonably small.
In two designs that were approximately contemporary I would therefore expect to see a tradeoff between different design goals (ie. waste production, chance of meltdown, fuel efficiency, total output, cost of production etc.)
Actually, no, that wouldn’t necessarily result in an anticorrelation, in fact it would likely result in a correlation, because waste production and meltdown chance both fall under the same supergoal (environmental safety)