I've just read a quick (hour) read of the report. I'm not a nuclear expert - so my comments mean nothing really.
a)The reassurance that tidal waves are not likely in the Uk seems un-reassuring to me. We've only being collecting data for what - 200/300 years at max. Supposing some 'freak storm' came.
b)While we don't have that many active nuclear plants - we've a lot of messy old plants. These seem more scary - seems like some of these places are really 'no-go' areas even on a good day, let alone in on a bad day. How much truth is in this article - I don't know?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards
c)Imperial have/had their own nuclear plant (for research). At only 100KW, it's quite small. Still, that's quite cool, I never knew a British uni had anything like this. Some Googling says it's being shut down - old and not paying for it's self as people don't want to do research in the UK
d)We only have one BWR plant in the UK - all ours are gas cooled. I believe this is safer? I've been on night shifts all week so my brain's dead and I didn't really understand it all, but the gas-cooled plants use carbon dioxide. On a day-to-day basis this is safer ( think) but in an unknown problem situation - do they have to find carbon dioxide? That seems more complex than pumping water in. I'm sure this technology is on a basic building block level simple to understand and I could find out on Google, but I'm very tired.....
e)Some mention of the how the situation in Japan was initially dealt with by in many part thanks to the improvisation of the workers - full credit to them - as there was no power to operate valves and automation they were lugging about car batteries or trying to use what sound like road drill pneumatic compressors to operate air controlled valves. Now I've never been inside a nuclear power plant - but I do work as a technical role (electronics not mechanical) in a large building - I work in broadcast - much more cosy than nuclear -but I can't imagine that lugging car batteries around in the dark in a damaged/flooded etc plant while in gas masks etc can be any fun at all.
f)A comment on how that the UK's emergency plans rely on people being there and staying around, putting their work ahead of themselves and family in an emergency -and that culturally the Japanese were very good at this. It says that this is not always the case.... In the Indian Bhopal disaster, all the operating/control staff ran away! I can't help feeling that if something very bad was to happen in the UK....people would do the same!
g) Towards the end there are a lot of statistics on death and nuclear radiation levels. As an example - chance of mother death in childbirth is about 1 in 8000 - seems quite high to me. Radiation wise - people in Cornwall receive quite a lot of radiation as it is. The allowed level for workers in Japan is 250msv i think? Is the scale linear or logarithmic?? Here's the table. Anyways my take on it is that - while any sort of large scale nuclear disaster would be bad here in the UK, and very bad in somewhere less organized - China, Pakistan, Russa etc on the whole - assuming nothing too bad goes wrong - you'll be ok. 'Assuming'. That's a very arrogant word really. The report is all based on the assumption that the UK stays in the relatively cosy condition that it has been for the last 100 years or so. No civil war, no floods, no freak storms, no chemical gas leaks/outbursts, no alien invasion etc. Even non-operational and long term decommissioned plants seem to need long term day to day love and care to keep things under control in the way coal/gas don't. I find that less reassuring.
UK annual average radon dose
1mSv
CT scan of the head
1.4mSv
UK average annual radiation dose
2.7mSv
USA average annual radiation dose
6.2mSv
CT scan of the chest
6.6mSv
Average annual radon dose to people in Cornwall
7.8mSv
Whole body CT scan
10mSv
Annual exposure limit for nuclear industry employees
20mSv
Level at which changes in blood cells can be readily observed
100mSv
Acute radiation effects including nausea and a reduction in white blood cell count
1000mSv
Dose of radiation which would kill about half of those receiving it in a month
5000mSv