4 ms·

If we're going to talk about liability, that makes nuclear look better compared to fossil fuels not worse, as nuclear disasters are so rare and deaths from some

If we're going to talk about liability, that makes nuclear look better compared to fossil fuels not worse, as nuclear disasters are so rare and deaths from something like coal are extremely common. Why is nuclear, middle-of-the-pack in terms of safety, worth singling out? The only thing I can think of is the human preference for people to die gradually in subtle hard to attribute ways than for a far smaller amount of people to die in dramatic nuclear meltdowns.

Zigurd 4y ago
If what you say is in fact realistic, nuclear plants would be insurable without capped liability. Insurers are not driven by public opinion.
- theptip 4y ago
  It’s much harder to buy a contract that pays $1B on a 1:1m event, than $1M on a 1:1k event, even though the EV is the same from both contracts. Very infrequent events are hard to quantify and so the error bars are wider, making insurance more expensive and just riskier for insurers. Here is the canonical source I site for power death rates: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
  - cma 4y ago
    How is $13B at all a reasonable liability number for the whole industry? That's on the order of only the reactor cost itself. The reactor owner may even get compensated instead of the population since some have done leaseback schemes with the operator.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      You got it wrong. It’s $13B that the whole industry will pay for a single reactor accident. Every nuclear power plant operator will have to pay $131M per reactor if there is one accident. Each reactor also has a mandatory insurance of $450M. This is to cover liability only. Separate from that is a mandatory insurance imposed by the NRC of $1.06B per site to cover cleanup costs [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...

Zigurd 4y ago

If what you say is in fact realistic, nuclear plants would be insurable without capped liability. Insurers are not driven by public opinion.

theptip 4y ago
It’s much harder to buy a contract that pays $1B on a 1:1m event, than $1M on a 1:1k event, even though the EV is the same from both contracts. Very infrequent events are hard to quantify and so the error bars are wider, making insurance more expensive and just riskier for insurers. Here is the canonical source I site for power death rates: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- cma 4y ago
  How is $13B at all a reasonable liability number for the whole industry? That's on the order of only the reactor cost itself. The reactor owner may even get compensated instead of the population since some have done leaseback schemes with the operator.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    You got it wrong. It’s $13B that the whole industry will pay for a single reactor accident. Every nuclear power plant operator will have to pay $131M per reactor if there is one accident. Each reactor also has a mandatory insurance of $450M. This is to cover liability only. Separate from that is a mandatory insurance imposed by the NRC of $1.06B per site to cover cleanup costs [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...