Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act Absolves Nuclear Corps of

[amborin]

The Hidden Threat to the Nuclear Renaissance

The revival of the nuclear energy industry carries the risk of a Wall Street-level financial meltdown, and then some.

Sam McPheeters

snip

Obama's..... 2011 budget proposes to triple federal loan guarantees for new plant construction, essentially forcing taxpayers to shoulder the immense risks that Wall Street learned to shun decades ago. Nuclear power offers all the fiscal risks of a "too big to fail" bank, with the added risk of being too dangerous to fail as well.

If this coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and the occasional environmentalist can get even one new plant built, it'll have succeeded in bringing about the most dramatic recovery of any weakened industry in American history. Since the earliest days of nuclear power, the industry has quietly nursed a crippling fiscal vulnerability. In 1957, America's first civilian atomic plant went online, Disney released Our Friend The Atom, and Congress passed the Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. This obscure federal law indemnifies the nuclear industry from full liability in the event of a nuclear accident. If one of the Indian Point reactors in New York melted down tomorrow, for example, corporate owners Entergy would only pay $10 billion toward the permanent evacuation of nearby Manhattan. By law, the government would foot the rest.

The American atomic industry would've languished without such an investor guarantee. And although current nuclear defenders love to crow about the free market -- especially now, with future emissions regulations set to increase the operating costs of all other non-renewable power sources -- the industry operates with an exponential financial handicap over all other energy technologies, gas and coal included. Factor in overruns, plant cancellations, and chronic mismanagement, and the only genuine advantage nuclear holds over renewable energy sources is that its infrastructure currently exists.

It is an article of faith, among industry advocates, that a Chernobyl-style meltdown could never happen in the United States. The Soviet plant was a graphite-moderated RBMK Reactor, a uniquely Russian design widely condemned as unsafe. And yet globally, there is no exact way to gauge risk in such an abstruse industry. American plants as a whole may be better designed and maintained than their former Soviet counterparts, but the opacity and complexity of the product means we have no real insight into how any particular plant is run. For example, GE-Hitachi submitted a 13,000-page preliminary application to build a new unit at the River Bend plant in Louisiana two years ago. With this absurdist amount of inscrutable data, informed public review is a bad punch line.

snip

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hidden_threat_to_the_nuclear_renaissance

[NNadir]

1. The Price Anderson Act is an INSURANCE INDUSTRY subsidy. The anti-nukes

care not a whit that zero claims have ever been paid under Price Anderson.

This is because the nuclear industry is safer than all of the industries that anti-nukes don't care about.

Typically this same group, working tirelessly for the gas, coal and oil industry cares not a whit that NO ONE can claim insurance on air pollution, particulates in the air, dangerous fossil fuel accidents, dangerous fossil fuel wars or any of that stuff.

Why? Because these industries are allowed to kill, free of charge at will.

If the dangerous fossil fuel industry were forced to insure itself against damage it causes - rather than have the nuclear industry insure against damage it doesn't cause - it would collapse in twenty five minutes, leaving open the question of what, exactly, our wind worshipers would do on doldrum days.

[kristopher]

5. Nope. Without the PAA the industry wouldn't be able to operate period because

it is UNINSURABLE.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Volume 1181 Issue Chernobyl
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Pages 31 - 220

Chapter II. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for Public Health

Alexey B. Nesterenko a , Vassily B. Nesterenko a ,† and Alexey V. Yablokov b
a
Institute of Radiation Safety (BELRAD), Minsk, Belarus b Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Address for correspondence: Alexey V. Yablokov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Voice: [phone]; fax: [phone]. [e-mail]
†Deceased


ABSTRACT

Problems complicating a full assessment of the effects from Chernobyl included official secrecy and falsification of medical records by the USSR for the first 3.5 years after the catastrophe and the lack of reliable medical statistics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Official data concerning the thousands of cleanup workers (Chernobyl liquidators) who worked to control the emissions are especially difficult to reconstruct. Using criteria demanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) resulted in marked underestimates of the number of fatalities and the extent and degree of sickness among those exposed to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. Data on exposures were absent or grossly inadequate, while mounting indications of adverse effects became more and more apparent. Using objective information collected by scientists in the affected areas—comparisons of morbidity and mortality in territories characterized by identical physiography, demography, and economy, which differed only in the levels and spectra of radioactive contamination—revealed significant abnormalities associated with irradiation, unrelated to age or sex (e.g., stable chromosomal aberrations), as well as other genetic and nongenetic pathologies.

In all cases when comparing the territories heavily contaminated by Chernobyl's radionuclides with less contaminated areas that are characterized by a similar economy, demography, and environment, there is a marked increase in general morbidity in the former.

Increased numbers of sick and weak newborns were found in the heavily contaminated territories in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia.

Accelerated aging is one of the well-known consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation. This phenomenon is apparent to a greater or lesser degree in all of the populations contaminated by the Chernobyl radionuclides.

This section describes the spectrum and the scale of the nonmalignant diseases that have been found among exposed populations.

Adverse effects as a result of Chernobyl irradiation have been found in every group that has been studied. Brain damage has been found in individuals directly exposed—liquidators and those living in the contaminated territories, as well as in their offspring. Premature cataracts; tooth and mouth abnormalities; and blood, lymphatic, heart, lung, gastrointestinal, urologic, bone, and skin diseases afflict and impair people, young and old alike. Endocrine dysfunction, particularly thyroid disease, is far more common than might be expected, with some 1,000 cases of thyroid dysfunction for every case of thyroid cancer, a marked increase after the catastrophe. There are genetic damage and birth defects especially in children of liquidators and in children born in areas with high levels of radioisotope contamination.

Immunological abnormalities and increases in viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases are rife among individuals in the heavily contaminated areas. For more than 20 years, overall morbidity has remained high in those exposed to the irradiation released by Chernobyl. One cannot give credence to the explanation that these numbers are due solely to socioeconomic factors. The negative health consequences of the catastrophe are amply documented in this chapter and concern millions of people.

The most recent forecast by international agencies predicted there would be between 9,000 and 28,000 fatal cancers between 1986 and 2056, obviously underestimating the risk factors and the collective doses. On the basis of I-131 and Cs-137 radioisotope doses to which populations were exposed and a comparison of cancer mortality in the heavily and the less contaminated territories and pre- and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, a more realistic figure is 212,000 to 245,000 deaths in Europe and 19,000 in the rest of the world. High levels of Te-132, Ru-103, Ru-106, and Cs-134 persisted months after the Chernobyl catastrophe and the continuing radiation from Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am will generate new neoplasms for hundreds of years.

A detailed study reveals that 3.8–4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated territories of Ukraine and Russia from 1990 to 2004 were caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The lack of evidence of increased mortality in other affected countries is not proof of the absence of effects from the radioactive fallout. Since 1990, mortality among liquidators has exceeded the mortality rate in corresponding population groups.

From 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators died before 2005—that is, some 15% of the 830,000 members of the Chernobyl cleanup teams. The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout. The number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.

[joshcryer]

7. That is true. If the fossil industry had to pay insurance to those it hurts, it would kill them.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. Consider this; How much renewable energy could we get for the

cost of a couple of nuclear power plants.

[NNadir]

3. Almost none.

Billions of dollars in subsidies around the world have not provided even one exajoule of the 500 exajoules humanity uses from so called "renewable energy."

[kristopher]

4. Nope - current independent analysis shows your conclusion is false

THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS: RENAISSANCE OR RELAPSE?

MARK COOPER
SENIOR FELLOW FOR ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
VERMONT LAW SCHOOL


Conclusion:

Policymakers should refuse to allow taxpayers and ratepayers to be put at risk. If nuclear reactors cannot stand on their own in the marketplace, they should not be propped up by subsidies.

This analysis has shown that there is a range of alternatives that can meet the need for electricity at a lower cost and with a more benign environmental impact. The aspiration of the nuclear enthusiasts symbolized in the first MIT report has become desperation in the second MIT report precisely because their cost estimates do not comport with reality. Notwithstanding their hope and hype, nuclear reactors are not economically competitive and would require massive subsidies to force them into the supply mix. It was only by ignoring the full range of alternatives -- above all efficiency and renewables -- that the MIT studies could predict a feasible economic future for nuclear reactors. Today the analytic environment has changed from the early days of the great bandwagon market, so that it is much more difficult get away with the "systematic confusion of expectation with fact, of hope with reality."

The highly touted nuclear renaissance is based on fiction, not fact. It garnered a significant part of its traction in the early 2000s with a series of cost projections that vastly understated the direct costs of nuclear reactors. As those early cost estimates fell by the wayside and the extremely high direct costs of nuclear reactors became apparent, advocates for nuclear power turned to climate change as the rationale to offset the high cost. But introducing environmental externalities does not resuscitate the nuclear option for two reasons. First, consideration of externalities improves the prospects of non-fossil, non-nuclear options to respond to climate change. Second, introducing externalities so prominently into the analysis highlights nuclear power’s own environmental and external problems. Even with climate change policy looming, nuclear power cannot compete in the marketplace, so its advocates are forced to seek to prop it up by shifting costs and risks to ratepayers and taxpayers.

The massive shift of costs necessary to render nuclear barely competitive with the most expensive alternatives, and the huge amount of leverage (figurative and literal) that is necessary to make nuclear power palatable to Wall Street and ratepayers is simply not worth it. The burden will fall on taxpayers. Policymakers, regulators, and the public should turn their attention to and put their resources behind the lower-cost, more environmentally benign alternatives that are available. If nuclear power’s time ever comes, it will be far in the future -- after the potential of the superior alternatives available today has been exhausted.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

6. The town of 1200 people that I live in could be run with wave generators

set in our jetty and plugged into the grid, we need to start doing this so we can refine the technology.

[Statistical]

10. Not a lot.

Put it in perspective...

Spain & Germany are the world leaders in solar power. They have spent tens of billions of dollars on massive solar farms.

These farms are massive each of the top ten are roughly 3x to 5x larger than largest PV farms in US.

http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php







Combined the top 10 plants combined have a peak capacity of 458 MW and annual generate 803 million kWh of energy.

Sounds good right? 803 MILLION kilowatt hours.

A single AP1000 nuclear reactor (and usually they are built in pairs) 9268 million kWh (9.3 billion kWh). A single nuclear reactor has 11 TIMES the annual output of the 10 largest PV farms in the world.... COMBINED.

Despite years of construction and tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and direct govt construction solar makes up 2.9% of electrical energy in Spain and ~1% in Germany.

[kristopher]

11. A little perspective

For photovoltaics (PVs) to become “a leading source of electricity” does not require numerous “breakthroughs, sustained over decades”; it requires only the sort of routine scaling and cost reduction that the similar semiconductor industry has already done. Just riding down the historic Moore’s-Law-like “experience curve” of higher volume and lower cost—a safe bet, since a threefold cost reduction across today’s PV value chain is already in view—makes PVs beat a new coal or nuclear plant within their respective lead times. That is, if you start building a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant in, say, New Jersey, and next door you start at the same time to build a solar power plant of equal annual output, then by the time the thermal plant is finished, the solar plant will be producing cheaper electricity, will deliver ~2.5× a coal plant’s onpeak output, will have enjoyed more favorable financing because it started producing revenue in year one, and will have been made by photovoltaic manufacturing capacity that can then reproduce the solar plant about every 20 months45—so you’d be sorry if you’d built the thermal plant.

• Photovoltaics’ business case, unlike nuclear’s, needn’t depend on government subsidies or support. Well-designed photovoltaic retrofits are already cost-effective in many parts of the United States and of the world, especially when integrated with improved end-use efficiency and demand response (e.g., PowerLight’s 2002 retrofit of three acres of PVs on the Santa Rita Jail46) and when financed over the long term like power plants, e.g., under the Power Purchase Contracts that many vendors now offer. PVs thrive in markets with little or no central-government subsidy, from Japan (2006–08) to rural Kenya, where electrifying households are as likely to buy them as to connect to the grid.

• Photovoltaics are highly correlated with peak loads; they often exhibit 60% and sometimes 90% Effective Load Carrying Capacity (how much of their capacity can be counted on to help meet peak loads). PV capacity factors can also be considerably higher than Brand’s assumed 0.14, especially with mounts that track towards the sun: modern one-axis trackers get ~0.25 in New Jersey or ~0.33–0.35 in sunny parts of California.47

• Solar power, Brand asserts, does not work well at the infrastructure level (i.e., in substantial installations feeding power to the grid; the largest installations in spring 2009 produced about 40–60 peak megawatts each). This will surprise the California utilities that recently ordered 850 megawatts of such installations, the firms whose reactor-scale PV farms are successfully beating California utilities’ posted utility price in 2009 auctions, the firms that are sustaining ~60–70% annual global growth in photovoltaic manufacturing, and their customers in at least 82 countries. Global installed PV capacity reached 15.2 GW in 2008, adding 5.95 GW (110% annual growth) of sales and 6.85 GW of manufacturing (the rest was in the pipeline).48 That’s more added capacity than the world nuclear industry has added in any year since 1996, and more added annual output than the world nuclear industry has added in any year since 2004. About 90% of the world’s PV capacity is grid-tied. Its operators think it works just fine.

Posted with permission from-
Four Nuclear Myths
A commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on similar writings
AMORY B. LOVINS, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF SCIENTIST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE
13 October 2009

[joshcryer]

12. I think you threw perspective out the window. Statistical gave a real world example.

You gave a theoretical possibility.

Let me know when we build a solar plant capable of equal annual output of even one Chinese 1GW coal plant. Thanks.

[bananas]

13. No, Statistical cherry-picked

The question was "renewable energy"
Statistical answered with just PV, which is currently the most expensive renewable.
It was cherry-picking.

[joshcryer]

15. Of course, I was merely responding to the Lovins nonsense.

[bananas]

16. Lovin's is not nonsense. nt

[bananas]

17. You thought an official PR website run by the nuclear industry was an "environmental" website

You were fooled.
You were bamboozled.
By marketers working for the nuclear industry.
Don't be embarrassed, they are good at what they do, that's why they are paid so well.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. This, of course, is why the US is the only country with reactors

Other countries' utilities don't benefit from PA, therefore the whole idea falls apart.

Wait a minute. That's not right...

[Viking12]

22. You don't think the govt of France subsidizes nuclear energy?

[Statistical]

9. Taxpayers haven't paid a single dime's worth of claims under P/A

[bananas]

14. That's a stupid argument

It's like someone saying they've played Russian Roulette 5 times, and so far the gun hasn't gone off, therefore it will never go off.

Price-Anderson was supposed to be temporary, once insurers saw how safe the plants were, they would step up and insure them and make lucrative profits!

Nope, the plants remain uninsurable. The damage from a catastrophic failure is effectively unlimited. When insurance companies do their risk-cost analysis, they conclude it's a bad deal. They won't touch it.

The same thing is happening with financing. They said all they needed was enough loan guarantees to build the first six reactors, then wall street would see that they could build them on-time on-budget and more loan guarantees wouldn't be necessary. Well now it's recognized that not only that loan guarantees will be needed for all new plants beyond the first six, but also there are no takers for the loan guarantees, the federal government (ie taxpayers) will have to loan the money, despite the expected high rate of default. We already know that this is going to be a huge boondoggle that taxpayers will have to bail out.

[Statistical]

18. Nobody anywhere issues "unlimited" coverage for ANYTHING.

So the idea that insurance companies won't insure power plants because of unlimited liability is foolish on base.

Insurance policies (all policies) put limits on protection. So insurance companies risk would be limited to the policy maximum.

Under P/A every plant has an individual $300 mil policy. Costs run about $1 mil per year for that coverage.

The next $10 B is not paid by insurance instead it is paid by a combined risk pool in which each power plant contributes ~$100 mil into a group fund. The utilities won this setup over the wishes of insurance companies because the risk of a payment >$300 mil is so remote it is far more cost effective for the utilities money to be in a trust fund earning interest rather than utility paying interest premiums.

We know EXACTLY what insurance on power plants cost. That isn't insurance. The problem is what level of insurance do you require. $10 billion? $50 billion? $100 billion? Say we set insurance requirement at group policy coverage of $100 billion. People like you could kill nuclear simply by requiring more and more coverage. You could lobby to up those limits to $200 billion, $500 billion, $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $10 trillion, etc.

Eventually with high enough insurance requirements (justified or not) you can make any venture unprofitable.

So
1) Under P/A every nuclear power plant has private liability insurance for first $300 million
2) Next $10 billion in coverage comes from group catastrophic fund.
3) P/A covers all claims (of which there never has been one) over $10 billion.

If you scrap P/A. What insurance requirement would you mandate?

[bananas]

19. You're confusing coverage vs damage

I said that the damage is effectively unlimited.
The damage from a car or airplane accident is limited.
It can be catastrophic to the people involved, but it is still limited.
The damage from a nuclear accident is effectively unlimited.
Chernobyl was not a worse-case accident, it could have been much worse.
It's been estimated conservatively at $300B+ just for the most heavily impacted areas,
over a trillion dollars for more comprehensive estimates.
A similarly large release of radiation over New York City or Los Angeles would surpass that just for the most heavily-impacted areas.
Waste disposal costs are effectively unlimited - we don't know how much it will cost, all our estimates so far have been underestimates, there is no effective lower bound to costs.

[bananas]

20. The only way to scrap PA

is to have reactors which can't melt down or otherwise release large amounts of radiation.
Only a few Gen IV designs do that, and only in theory.
When the insurance companies do their own due-diligence, they are likely to find flaws allowing large releases of radiation.
We've already seen that with the PBMR.

[bananas]

21. That's a screwball agument.

Every insurance policy has "acts of God" exemptions.
But this isn't an "act of God" exemption.
This is a known "act of Man" which can only be prevented or risk-reduced by regulatory oversight.