No nuclear reactor provided any insurance: General Insurance Corporation

[bananas]

Source: Economic Times (India)

The General Insurance Corporation has not provided insurance to any nuclear reactor in the country under the Civil Liability Nuclear Damage Act, an RTI response from the public sector insurer has said.

Greenpeace, an NGO working on environment related issues, had filed an RTI with the GIC seeking details about the insurance provided to nuclear reactors under the act. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act enables operator of nuclear power plants in India to seek partial compensation from suppliers in case of accidents.

Under the act, nuclear reactors have to be insured with a cover of Rs 1500 crore, in case of any nuclear accident. The NGO had also asked whether any insurance was provided to Kudankulam unit 3 and 4 as these units are ideally the first units which should fall under the liability law, which came into force two years ago.

Although unit 1 of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) was commissioned in October last year, the agreement on units 1 and 2 was signed much before. "No insurance is offered by GIC to any reactor," GIC said in a response. "No insurance is offered by GIC for unit 3 and 4 of Kudankulam." The insurance company also said that no meeting has taken place to discuss insurance proposal for KKNPP's units 3 and 4.

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Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/no-nuclear-reactor-provided-any-insurance-general-insurance-corporation/articleshow/33462608.cms

[freshwest]

1. The government of India will end up being the default insurer, like the USA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

No insurer nor government will last as long as the pollution, so it's can't be resolved long term by an insurance policy, etc.

[bananas]

2. India passed a similar act in 2010 as part of Bush's "Nukes for Mangoes" deal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93United_States_Civil_Nuclear_Agreement

India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement

The 123 Agreement signed between the United States of America and the Republic of India is known as the U.S.–India Civil Nuclear Agreement or Indo-US nuclear deal.

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It is India's stated objective to increase the production of nuclear power generation from its present capacity of 4,780 MWe to 20,000 MWe in the next decade. However, the developmental economic advising firm Dalberg, which advises the IMF and the World Bank, moreover, has done its own analysis of the economic value of investing in nuclear power development in India. Their conclusion is that for the next 20 years such investments are likely to be far less valuable economically or environmentally than a variety of other measures to increase electricity production in India.[citation needed] They have noted that U.S. nuclear vendors cannot sell any reactors to India unless and until India caps third party liabilities or establishes a credible liability pool to protect U.S. firms from being sued in the case of an accident or a terrorist act of sabotage against nuclear plants. Although India's parliament passed The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages bill on August 25, 2010,[50][51] the legislation does not meet international standards for nuclear liability as set forth in the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, because it allows the operator to sue the supplier in case of an accident due to technical defects in the plant.[52] After the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, issues relating to the safety of operating nuclear power plants, compensation in the event of a radiation-leak accident, disaster clean-up costs, operator responsibility and supplier liability has once again come into the spot-light.

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You read that right - the international standard is that manufacturers aren't held liable for faulty nuclear products. For example, Mitsubishu wouldn't be liable for an accident at San Onofre if it had been allowed to go online, even though Mitsibishu made the faulty steam generators. It's a scam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Liability_Act

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The Act effectively caps the maximum amount of liability in case of each nuclear accident at INR5 billion (US$84 million) to be paid by the operator of the nuclear plant, and if the cost of the damages exceeds this amount, special drawing rights up to 300 million will be paid by the Central Government.

The Act made amendments in the Atomic Energy Act 1962 allowing private investment in the Indian nuclear power program. The issue of an accident is sensitive in India, where a gas leak in a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal city killed about 20,000 people in 1984 in one of the world's worst industrial disasters. The Act came into force from 11 November 2011.[3]

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