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It understates the statistical risk! Nuclear power plants have international treatise to severely curtail their liability in the event of an accident because nu
by endorphone 8y ago
It understates the statistical risk! Nuclear power plants have international treatise to severely curtail their liability in the event of an accident because nuclear events are extraordinarily costly.
Fukushima thus far has yielded some $700B USD of costs, and it has no end in site. Chernobyl has been estimated at having cost $235B USD.
No insurance company would touch this sort of liability, so governments put a hard cap on the potential liability. Here in Ontario, nuclear plants were only responsible for $75M of damage for the longest time, though over the next few years it will increase to $1B. The actual damage it could reasonably cost -- what any other industry would have to insure for -- would be more in the $1000B ($1T) range.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoYeah, I actually think the advanced nuclear companies should say they don't need things like Price-Anderson to cap liabilities. They're really that safe, and the designers are that confident. Doing so would demonstrate that level of confidence. The fair comparison, though, is: what's the cost of global warming, and who will insure against it once fossil fuel emitters are held liable? Also, if we looked at the latest research on low-dose radiation effects and really let that sink in, we'd spend far less on the cleanup of near background dose stuff after the few accidents that do occur.