I am not sure why the structural integrity of the stone would be compromised by a tighter radius. Check with another fabricator or two and see what they say. Also make sure you are buying a quality Quartz. A lot of sub standard brands have been flooding the market in recent years. They are not all the same.

Alyson:

You are getting that large a radius because that's the smallest radius of the CNC tooling used to make your production tops. In order to make money at the price he's quoted you, your fabricator has to plop that slab on the machine and pull it off finished without any human hands touching it.

You can get a tighter radius, manufacturers have minimums (3/8", page 17), but you'll probably have to change fabricators to do so.

You can eliminate the radii entirely if you put a French miter in each corner, but now you're looking at seams. Depending on the particulates, color, and movement of your stone, this may or may not be a problem.

I think it depends on the fabricator (more than the brand of quartz), their tooling, whether or not they use a CNC, do hand finish work, do french mitres...etc. I have a fairly large radius in my inside corner. I like it. I wanted a seamless corner, went with an ogee edge and my fabber uses a CNC, so mine is rounded. But my kitchen is traditional looking. I can see if someone has a more modern appearance, the squarer the better. Most fabricators that use CNC machines can do some hand finish work but charge extra for that...for inside corners on sink cutouts and such.

Put in a French miter is the only way to get a relatively sharp inside corner.

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Thank you all for the input. Through lots of discussion I was able to get them to do a 3/4" which I will be fine with. We didn't go with a french miter because I would be putting more seams in the counter tops than I would need to and would like to minimize the seams.