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Even while you dont include deaths involved in construction and ongoing security required by nuclear plants, those deaths-per-Wh-so-far figures do not represent

Even while you dont include deaths involved in construction and ongoing security required by nuclear plants, those deaths-per-Wh-so-far figures do not represent risk, which is much more complicated. Its not possible to fully insure nuclear plants - because no company can take on board liability for disasters which nuclear is demonstrably capable of but fortunately have avoided to date, with considerable expense on safety measures. It should be obvious when you think about it; if "it'll never happen" (because it can't or hasn't happened) is true, then insurance actuaries could establish that and there would be no problem with insuring the "safest source of power", but governments have to wave the responsibility for full liability instead. There is a real probabilistic risk of great and persistent tragedies from nuclear plants, the more there are the greater that risk. Fortunately wind, solar and storage are cheaper already than nuclear [1] and their prices are continuing to drop fast. There may be a good case for improving safeguards on these industries too - it should not be as expensive as trying to fully safeguard nuclear has been. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Thank you. Whenever I see someone compare nuclear deaths to solar deaths (lot of solar death are falling off a roof), I slap my forehead when they suggest full speed ahead with nuclear (despite it being too expensive, uninsurable without government backing, and no waste disposal plans) instead of...making it harder to fall off of roofs when installing rooftop solar.
- pimmen 8y ago
  We allow cities close to the ocean even though the Japanese tsunami damages cost more than ten times as much as the nuclear accident it caused. We allow cities on fault lines as well, even though earth quakes could kill hundreds of thousands of people. What does ”uninsurable” mean? If nuclear power plants are uninsurable Silicon Valley is uninsurable.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Uninsurable means a nuclear generator cannot obtain commercial liability insurance due to black swan events that could incur hundreds of billions of dollars in liability. Silicon Valley is insurance because the liability exposure is substantially less.
- stale2002 8y ago
  By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo. It is easy to bring up problem after problem with alternatives. It is not easy to show why the status quo is somehow better, because it is not. A death is a death. Someone dieing because they fell off a roof is equally as bad as dieing due to radiation.
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    ‘toomuchtodo is supporting an alternate solution: taking measures to reduce the rate at which solar installers fall of of roofs.
  - C_J_H 8y ago
    I would disagree. Thousands of that can only be done by humans are by many measures better than a single dangerous plant that produces the same economic output in a more concentrated fashion.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo. I do support an alternative solution: making rooftop installs safer, and more utility scale ground mount solar. Both are infinitely more tractable as problems than properly managed nuclear power. The US is already on track to install more utility scale solar this year (~150GW) than total existing nuclear generating capacity, even accounting for capacity factor. One year!
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> if "it'll never happen" (because it can't or hasn't happened) is true, then insurance actuaries could establish that and there would be no problem with insuring Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem. You can't know the lower bound on the probability of something that has never actually happened, but you can calculate an upper bound based on the period of time it hasn't happened, which is all you really need. They can calculate what the premiums should be. The issue is that you're asking them to carry a hundred billion dollars in insurance, but insurance companies have capitalization requirements. AIG's market cap is less than seventy five billion. They can't write an individual policy they don't have the resources to pay out on in the event of a claim, regardless of the probability that it actually happens. So the problem isn't the risk calculation, it's the amount of insurance you want them to carry. The solution is to find someone who could actually pay out a claim that large in the unlikely event that it comes to that, which could only be the government, so that's what they did.
- strainer 8y ago
  The annual revenue alone of the worlds ten largest insurance companies is about 20 thousand billion USD [1]. This sector is prepared to cover larger risks than most governments - for a somewhat competitive profitable amount. > Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem. Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear. [1] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-insurance-companies-in-the-world-by-revenue.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-insurance-compan...
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > The annual revenue alone of the worlds ten largest insurance companies is about 20 thousand billion USD [1]. This sector is prepared to cover larger risks than most governments - for a somewhat competitive profitable amount. I think you mean two thousand billion. Which is problematic since there are more than twenty nuclear power stations in the US (each of which would need to be insured), even if that wasn't revenue. Insurance companies are competitive. If they take in a hundred billion dollars, they pay out more than ninety in claims the same year. They can't pay a claim using the money they're already using to pay other types of claims. > Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear. The resultant premiums wouldn't be that bad if it was only the risk of a nuclear disaster they had to account for. But a smart insurance company is going to take into account that US courts have a way of connecting sympathetic victims to deep-pocketed or well-insured corporations, even when there is only a tangential relationship with them, when it's the only way to save a devastated community. For example, if Fukushima had happened in the US, there is a decent chance that courts would have tried to tack a lot of the cost of the damage from the tsunami on the plant operators. Or for another example, PG&E and the recent wildfires in California. That's a different kind of risk, but it's one an insurance company that doesn't want to go bankrupt has to account for, and it's also the one that makes buying that amount of insurance prohibitively expensive in the private market.
roenxi 8y ago
> because no company can take on board liability for disasters which nuclear is demonstrably capable of but fortunately have avoided to date Recognising that this is a minor portion of a larger post - there are a lot of industrial companies that couldn't possibly cover the damage if something goes badly wrong (eg, explosives supplier flattens a major port, 3rd world mining accident, electrical utility causes wildfire, most mid-sized building companies if a skyscraper collapses, etc). Even many insurance companies won't pay out if a flood or fire hits a city, because they can't afford to cover large-scale disasters. Contamination in drinking water is also a pretty big risk. At that level of probability, the only way of dealing with these threats is government. No other organisation else has the manpower or resourcing to deal with rare catastrophes. It is a fact that liability for a nuclear catastrophe would overwhelm a companies ability to pay. However, we do a lot of things that are more risky and more costly at that level of probability. The fact that there is risk is a very real consideration. That fact we can't insure it is not - there are too many things where, if a rare event happens, the liability cannot be shouldered by a corporation. Fukushima cleanup, one of the worst disasters we've seen in 30 years, seems to have cost about $15 billion damages + $60 in compensation [0][1] vs $250 billion due to the actual disaster that caused the nuclear plant to fold (the tsunami). And this is as an unexpected, low probability, cost. If a corporation can't handle this, it is tiny bikkies to a government to cover the $15 billion in actual cleanup. And the probability of the government needing to act is tiny to start with. The risks here are so small we don't even talk about them outside the context of nuclear power. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Costs_of_the_clean-up_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-five-years-what-is-the-cost-of-fukushima/#575feef922ed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-fiv...
- strainer 8y ago
  > there are a lot of industrial companies that couldn't possibly cover the damage if something goes badly wrong (eg, explosives supplier flattens a major port, 3rd world mining accident, electrical utility causes wildfire, most mid-sized building companies if a skyscraper collapses, etc) Of course this is why in developed countries they are required to buy insurance. Insurance companies exist which can take on extremely large liabilities for industry, the point is that Nuclear has never been able to afford the size of premiums which would make the full risk of its liabilities profitable to cover. Fukushima was by no stretch an example of the worst nuclear event liable to occur. A bad accident or attack on any one of the worlds hundreds of nuclear plants CAN seriously irradiate many thousands, even millions of people in some locations, poison water tables and make land unlivable for decades - continuing harm to many creatures even if people are able to avoid it. After each disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima we don't just have a new "rate of deaths so far" line to work with, that average line is a one dimensional extremely simplistic measurement. Scientists and engineers who have taken it and as a valid summary of hazard should really know better.

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Thank you. Whenever I see someone compare nuclear deaths to solar deaths (lot of solar death are falling off a roof), I slap my forehead when they suggest full speed ahead with nuclear (despite it being too expensive, uninsurable without government backing, and no waste disposal plans) instead of...making it harder to fall off of roofs when installing rooftop solar.

pimmen 8y ago
We allow cities close to the ocean even though the Japanese tsunami damages cost more than ten times as much as the nuclear accident it caused. We allow cities on fault lines as well, even though earth quakes could kill hundreds of thousands of people. What does ”uninsurable” mean? If nuclear power plants are uninsurable Silicon Valley is uninsurable.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Uninsurable means a nuclear generator cannot obtain commercial liability insurance due to black swan events that could incur hundreds of billions of dollars in liability. Silicon Valley is insurance because the liability exposure is substantially less.
stale2002 8y ago
By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo. It is easy to bring up problem after problem with alternatives. It is not easy to show why the status quo is somehow better, because it is not. A death is a death. Someone dieing because they fell off a roof is equally as bad as dieing due to radiation.
- kd5bjo 8y ago
  ‘toomuchtodo is supporting an alternate solution: taking measures to reduce the rate at which solar installers fall of of roofs.
- C_J_H 8y ago
  I would disagree. Thousands of that can only be done by humans are by many measures better than a single dangerous plant that produces the same economic output in a more concentrated fashion.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  > By refusing to support an alternative solution, you are supporting the status quo. I do support an alternative solution: making rooftop installs safer, and more utility scale ground mount solar. Both are infinitely more tractable as problems than properly managed nuclear power. The US is already on track to install more utility scale solar this year (~150GW) than total existing nuclear generating capacity, even accounting for capacity factor. One year!

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> if "it'll never happen" (because it can't or hasn't happened) is true, then insurance actuaries could establish that and there would be no problem with insuring Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem. You can't know the lower bound on the probability of something that has never actually happened, but you can calculate an upper bound based on the period of time it hasn't happened, which is all you really need. They can calculate what the premiums should be. The issue is that you're asking them to carry a hundred billion dollars in insurance, but insurance companies have capitalization requirements. AIG's market cap is less than seventy five billion. They can't write an individual policy they don't have the resources to pay out on in the event of a claim, regardless of the probability that it actually happens. So the problem isn't the risk calculation, it's the amount of insurance you want them to carry. The solution is to find someone who could actually pay out a claim that large in the unlikely event that it comes to that, which could only be the government, so that's what they did.

strainer 8y ago
The annual revenue alone of the worlds ten largest insurance companies is about 20 thousand billion USD [1]. This sector is prepared to cover larger risks than most governments - for a somewhat competitive profitable amount. > Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem. Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear. [1] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-insurance-companies-in-the-world-by-revenue.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-insurance-compan...
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > The annual revenue alone of the worlds ten largest insurance companies is about 20 thousand billion USD [1]. This sector is prepared to cover larger risks than most governments - for a somewhat competitive profitable amount. I think you mean two thousand billion. Which is problematic since there are more than twenty nuclear power stations in the US (each of which would need to be insured), even if that wasn't revenue. Insurance companies are competitive. If they take in a hundred billion dollars, they pay out more than ninety in claims the same year. They can't pay a claim using the money they're already using to pay other types of claims. > Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear. The resultant premiums wouldn't be that bad if it was only the risk of a nuclear disaster they had to account for. But a smart insurance company is going to take into account that US courts have a way of connecting sympathetic victims to deep-pocketed or well-insured corporations, even when there is only a tangential relationship with them, when it's the only way to save a devastated community. For example, if Fukushima had happened in the US, there is a decent chance that courts would have tried to tack a lot of the cost of the damage from the tsunami on the plant operators. Or for another example, PG&E and the recent wildfires in California. That's a different kind of risk, but it's one an insurance company that doesn't want to go bankrupt has to account for, and it's also the one that makes buying that amount of insurance prohibitively expensive in the private market.

roenxi 8y ago

> because no company can take on board liability for disasters which nuclear is demonstrably capable of but fortunately have avoided to date Recognising that this is a minor portion of a larger post - there are a lot of industrial companies that couldn't possibly cover the damage if something goes badly wrong (eg, explosives supplier flattens a major port, 3rd world mining accident, electrical utility causes wildfire, most mid-sized building companies if a skyscraper collapses, etc). Even many insurance companies won't pay out if a flood or fire hits a city, because they can't afford to cover large-scale disasters. Contamination in drinking water is also a pretty big risk. At that level of probability, the only way of dealing with these threats is government. No other organisation else has the manpower or resourcing to deal with rare catastrophes. It is a fact that liability for a nuclear catastrophe would overwhelm a companies ability to pay. However, we do a lot of things that are more risky and more costly at that level of probability. The fact that there is risk is a very real consideration. That fact we can't insure it is not - there are too many things where, if a rare event happens, the liability cannot be shouldered by a corporation. Fukushima cleanup, one of the worst disasters we've seen in 30 years, seems to have cost about $15 billion damages + $60 in compensation [0][1] vs $250 billion due to the actual disaster that caused the nuclear plant to fold (the tsunami). And this is as an unexpected, low probability, cost. If a corporation can't handle this, it is tiny bikkies to a government to cover the $15 billion in actual cleanup. And the probability of the government needing to act is tiny to start with. The risks here are so small we don't even talk about them outside the context of nuclear power. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Costs_of_the_clean-up_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-five-years-what-is-the-cost-of-fukushima/#575feef922ed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-fiv...

strainer 8y ago
> there are a lot of industrial companies that couldn't possibly cover the damage if something goes badly wrong (eg, explosives supplier flattens a major port, 3rd world mining accident, electrical utility causes wildfire, most mid-sized building companies if a skyscraper collapses, etc) Of course this is why in developed countries they are required to buy insurance. Insurance companies exist which can take on extremely large liabilities for industry, the point is that Nuclear has never been able to afford the size of premiums which would make the full risk of its liabilities profitable to cover. Fukushima was by no stretch an example of the worst nuclear event liable to occur. A bad accident or attack on any one of the worlds hundreds of nuclear plants CAN seriously irradiate many thousands, even millions of people in some locations, poison water tables and make land unlivable for decades - continuing harm to many creatures even if people are able to avoid it. After each disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima we don't just have a new "rate of deaths so far" line to work with, that average line is a one dimensional extremely simplistic measurement. Scientists and engineers who have taken it and as a valid summary of hazard should really know better.