Where do you keep getting this $600 billion dollar number? Most of the sources I've seen say it's around $50 billion. And Tepco is the 4th largest electric utility in the world, not the 1st. Adding Chernobyl to nuclear's safety record is unfair. Chernobyl just showed what can happen to a nuclear reactor if you ignore all safety issues. The Soviet Union didn't really care much about safety. Current nuclear reactors are much safer than Fukishima and Chernobyl reactors. Most future nuclear reactors can be designed to use passive safety which makes it an order of magnitude safer still. I don't care about global warming. Nuclear can be far safer, cheaper, and cleaner than any other power source. Do you know how much subsidies wind and solar receive? The subsidies are much larger/kwh than other power sources. Solar costs about a $1/kwh without subsidies. Renewable energy subsidies are paid for by coal, so the more subsidies you have, the more coal you are burning. Research 4th generation nuclear concepts, more specifically the LFTR, and you will see that nuclear can be very safe and economical at the same time. On Apr 2, 2012, at 3:02 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
> No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than nuclear > power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining pollution. > > Anyone who believes that global warming is real will certainly agree that > nuclear power is safer even factoring the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. > I think alternative energy such as wind and solar would be more > cost-effective and much safer. Unfortunately Japan does not have significant > wind resources, and not much potential solar power either. > > Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely disastrous > from an economic and business point of view. No other source of energy could > conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost even a small > fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted the world's > largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses, towns, bridges > and livelihood of 90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square miles of land. > > (It turns out 90,000 people were ordered out by the government but 60,000 > others left on their own after they and their local governments detected > radiation far above natural background. TEPCO and the government say they > will not pay compensation to these 60,000 people, even though no one disputes > their land now has lethal levels of radioactivity.) > > If TEPCO had known this might happen I seriously doubt they would've built > any nuclear power reactors. No corporate executive would risk the destruction > of the entire company in a single accident. It reminds me of Churchill's > description of World War I Adm. Jellicoe as "the only man on either side who > could lose the war in an afternoon." > > People say that no one was killed. I expect many of the young workers will > prematurely die of cancer in the next 20 or 30 years. But assuming for the > sake of argument that no one was killed the situation is still unprecedented. > Consider this: > > The U.S. commercial airline fleet consists of 7185 airplanes. That includes > "3,739 mainline passenger aircraft (over 90 seats) . . . 879 mainline cargo > aircraft (including those operated by FedEx and UPS) and 2,567 regional > aircraft jets/turboprops." I believe the average replacement cost of the big > mainline ones is around $150 million per aircraft. > > http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011-0312 > > http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/ > > Okay imagine that in the middle of one night, when these airplanes are parked > with no one aboard, all 4,615 of the big passenger and freight airplanes > suffer fuel leaks and are destroyed by fire. No one is hurt, but the entire > fleet is destroyed. The replacement cost of the equipment would be ~$692 > billion, which is roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will cost. Do you > think that Boeing, Airbus or any airline would survive this? Do you think any > insurance company would? I don't. > > As it happens, this incident did not destroy the Japanese insurance industry. > That is because no nuclear power plant in the world is covered by private > insurance. When nuclear power was invented, the insurance companies took a > close look and decided it was too risky and they would never cover it. From > the very beginning of nuclear power this risk has been assumed by national > governments only. So the Japanese government and TEPCO customers are on the > hook for this. Obviously, no power company can pay for an accident that costs > ten times their entire annual revenue! > > TEPCO's earnings are here: > > http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/tool/annual/pdf/2011/ar201101-e.pdf > > 5065 billion yen = $62 billion > > Jones Beene and others have correctly pointed out that coal-fired plants > generally spew far more radioactive material into the environment than > nuclear power plants do. This is common knowledge. No one disputes it. > However, the Fukushima plant probably put out more radioactive materials > thanout > all coal fired plants in history have, and I am sure the Chernobyl reactor > did. Here is one description of the radioactive material at a location 40 km > from the Fukushima reactors, a year after the accident, long after short > lived isotopes were gone: > > "Outside the Iitate community hall, the radiation dosimeter carried by one of > my travelling > companions to measure external radiation reads 13.26 microsieverts per hour > -- a level > around one hundred times natural background radiation. When he holds his > dosimeter over > the drainage culvert in front of the hall, it stops working altogether -- the > radiation level has > gone off the scale. One of the things that you quickly learn in a place like > Iitate is that levels > of radiation can vary enormously within a relatively small area. Iitate has > the misfortune to > lie in a spot where the winds from the coast meet the mountains, and quickly > became a > radiation hotspot due to precipitation. Its inhabitants are among the 150,000 > people who > evacuated from the area affected by the nuclear accident, and have no idea > when they will > be able to return home." > > http://www.greenpeace.org/switzerland/Global/switzerland/de/publication/Nuclear/Lessons%20Learned%20from%20Fukushima%20final%20text.pdf > > > You know darn well that such high levels of radioactivity spread over such a > large area are bound to cause health problems in the years to come. Look at > what happened to U.S. communities exposed to aboveground bomb tests. > > As I mentioned, the government sent Mizuno a soil sample taken many > kilometers from the plant. He found it was so radioactive he was afraid to > work with it and did not know where to store it. Mizuno is usually blasé > about radioactivity. > > - Jed >
