Yep! That's the liability that I was told by the scientists at Los Alamos years ago. But it was 300 million and not 375. That's why Shoreham was never allowed to open on Long Island. The rich crowd in the Hamptons refused and so the state had to eat the entire loss for the completed Nuclear Power Station that never went online. They claimed it was because of no evacuation plan but Indian Point is also not evacuable. But the people around Indian Point are not as politically connected or as rich as the East Hamptons. Thanks for posting that. Harry just denied it when I pointed it out.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2011 4:39 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Viability of nuclear energy, insuring accidents Thanks, Ray, for the N.Y. Times article by Dr. Helen Caldicott . Two pieces here. The first, from Canada, busts the nuclear power industry myth about being the most viable clean energy solution. The second, written by a US lawyer, discusses liability caps of the industry resulting from the Price-Anderson Act of 1957. Natalia. We tried the nuclear power experiment - and it didn't work by Joshua Pearce The Whig Standard, Kingston, Ontario, March 24, 2011 Every nation with nuclear power is currently in a frenzy to determine if they are at risk of ending up in a situation like the one plaguing Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. What is happening now in Japan simply lets the public in on a secret that has been well known in both the energy and insurance industries for decades: No nuclear power plant would exist without a government-backed insurance liability subsidy. Nuclear energy is simply not insurable in the free market. Period. Thus, the nuclear industry is completely dependent on an artificial cap on insurance liability, which reduces the costs of nuclear energy to something affordable rather than its real cost. In the U.S. this cap is about $10 billion. If the nuclear disaster amounts to something like $310 billion, as the U.S. Sandia National Lab. estimated in the 1980s for a major screw-up, then the public ends up picking up the tab on $300 billion. In Canada this cap is orders of magnitude lower, exposing the public to an even greater potential financial risk. These liability caps represent an indirect subsidy because no money actually flows from government coffers unless a disaster occurs. In general these indirect subsidies have been ignored because they are hard to calculate. Understandably it can be difficult to estimate the full effects of a nuclear accident given the difficulty of placing value on human lives, health, a contaminated environment and loss of productivity. For example, what happens to the property values within 20 km of Fukushima? Or what is the cost if there is a meltdown like Chernobyl where the national sacrificial zone amounted to the area of Kentucky? On the other hand, it is exactly for these reasons that such calculations must be attempted and more research on potential damages be developed with risks included in assessing nuclear energy viability. And if the nuclear industry is to be placed in competition with alternative sources of energy, then it is essential to understand the full weight and cost of its operational risks. There are other options. Currently, nuclear power and solar energy are competing for policy support in Ontario, which governs their economic viability. Queen's University recently completed a study (in press in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy), in which the effects of indirect subsidies in the nuclear and solar technologies are compared. The potential power, energy and financial returns were calculated for the indirect subsidy that is currently provided to the U.S. nuclear industry in the form of liability caps, with providing the same level of indirect subsidy to the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry in the form of loan guarantees. The startling results show even if just this one relatively minor subsidy was diverted from nuclear power generation into large-scale solar manufacturing, it would result in both more installed power and more energy produced by mid-century. Such a policy would increase the cumulative solar industry over the 500 TWhours mark in just 10 years and by the end of the study the cumulative electricity output of solar amounts to an additional 48,600 TW-hours worth more than $5 trillion over the nuclear case. Nuclear power plants do not produce enough electricity to justify the public subsidizing the risks. Japan is one of the most technologically advanced societies, with some of the best scientists and engineers in the world - their safeguards are top of the line. Yet, an extremely unlikely one-two punch of an earthquake and tsunami have them on the ropes. Nuclear experts of every flavour are flocking to the media to assure us such a thing could never happen in Canada. Can we handle a one-two punch (e. g., can we prevent a major radioactive release if our plants are hit with say a tornado then a terrorist attack?) The nuclear experts, of course, have no idea. The people that do know work for insurance companies. If any insurance company is willing to shoulder the unsubsidized full liability of our nuclear fleet then that is the first sign nuclear is a viable option. This would significantly increase the costs of nuclear energy because the insurance premiums would skyrocket, particularly given what is happening in Japan, and make it extremely unlikely that nuclear could ever compete on the free market. Nuclear power is simply not worth risk. We tried the nuclear experiment - it did not work. It is time we cut our losses and started putting all of our financial resources into a portfolio of renewable energy technologies. Joshua Pearce is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Science, Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen's University. U.S. Nuclear Industry Protected from Liability in Event of a Nuclear Catastrophe Posted by Paul Napoli <http://www.injuryboard.com/Paul-Napoli/> March 26, 2011 11:17 PM, March 26, 2011 Most Americans would be shocked to find that in the event of a major nuclear accident at a U.S. nuclear power plant, even in a large catastrophe like Chernobyl in Ukraine <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster> , the plant owner is only liable for a tiny fraction of damages that could occur. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Inde mnity_Act> was to encourage commercial development of nuclear power by placing a cap on the amount of liability for each nuclear plant licensee in the event of a nuclear accident. Each licensee is required to pay into an insurance pool, currently at about 12.6 billion, which is to ensure adequate funds to satisfy liability claims of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of an accident at one of the plants. "Under existing policy, owners of nuclear power plants pay a premium each year for $375 million in private insurance for offsite liability coverage for each reactor unit," says the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) website <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html> . "This primary, or first tier, insurance is supplemented by a second tier. In the event a nuclear accident causes damages in excess of $375 million, each licensee would be assessed a prorated share of the excess up to $111.9 million. With 104 reactors currently licensed to operate, this secondary tier of funds contains about $12.6 billion." When you consider that nuclear power plants are located near some of this country's largest cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago and Miami, how much would it cost in personal injury and property damage if a major nuclear accident occurred? According to an article by CNN Money, a 1982 study for the NRC found that a nuclear meltdown could potentially cause 50,000 fatalities and $314 billion (equaling $720 billion today) in property damage. AOL News reports <http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/18/would-fund-protect-us-taxpayers-from-nuke -disaster-here/> that a 2009 study by professors at the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School called "Environment <http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/library/WP20090331_GH,HK_EnvLiabilities. pdf> & Energy: Catastrophic Liabilities" hypothesized what would happen if a meltdown occurred at Indian Point Energy Center in Westchester County, NY. The study concluded that 64,000 people would eventually die resulting from the incident. They estimated that claims from surviving families would be about $384 billion and that economic losses would be between $50 billion and $100 billion. 25 years since the disaster <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/27/chernobyl-disaster-anniversary- japan> at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what is now Ukraine, cities and villages contaminated with radiation within a 60-mile radius of the plant remain ghost towns, residency and business prohibited due to radiation levels that will linger for hundreds of years. Many people evacuated immediately after the accident, told they would be back home in just a few days, have never been allowed to return. If a nuclear disaster should occur at a U.S. nuclear power plant and the 12.6 billion insurance fund is insufficient to cover the claims of bodily injury, sickness, disease or resulting death, property damage and loss as well as reasonable living expenses for individuals evacuated, the government and taxpayers would likely be left to pay the rest. All property and liability insurance policies issued in the U.S. exclude nuclear accidents. Since the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident> in 1979, the insurance fund established by the Price-Anderson Act has paid out $71 million in claims and litigation costs associated with the accident.
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