Researchers have an idea for how future nuclear reactors can avoid the trauma that led to the 2011 disaster at Fukushima: by building new plants five to seven miles out into the ocean. This affords some absolutely crucial advantages, Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, which led the research, explains in a video presenting the idea. In particular, Buongiorno says that this distance into the ocean will remove the risk of tsunamis, which wont throw big waves in such deep water, and of earthquakes, the seismic waves of which will be damped by the ocean. The ocean itself can be used as an infinite heat sink, Buongiorno says.
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