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"The Risk of a Nuclear Catastrophe ... Could Total Trillions of Dollars and Even BANKRUPT A COUNTRY"
Preface: I am not against all nuclear power, solely the unsafe type we have today. Future designs - like thorium reactors (see this and this) - may be a different animal altogether.
AP has a good article (via the Washington Post) on nuclear power economics:
Nuclear power is a viable source for cheap energy only if it goes uninsured.
***
Governments
that use nuclear energy are torn between the benefit of low-cost
electricity and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, which could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country.
The
bottom line is that it’s a gamble: Governments are hoping to dodge a
one-off disaster while they accumulate small gains over the long-term.
The
cost of a worst-case nuclear accident at a plant in Germany, for
example, has been estimated to total as much as €7.6 trillion ($11 trillion), while the mandatory reactor insurance is only €2.5 billion.
“The €2.5 billion will be just enough to buy the stamps for the
letters of condolence,” said Olav Hohmeyer, an economist at the
University of Flensburg who is also a member of the German government’s
environmental advisory body.
The situation in the U.S., Japan, China, France and other countries is similar.
***
“Around
the globe, nuclear risks — be it damages to power plants or the
liability risks resulting from radiation accidents — are covered by the
state. The private insurance industry is barely liable,” said Torsten
Jeworrek, a board member at Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest
reinsurance companies.
***
In financial terms, nuclear
incidents can be so devastating that the cost of full insurance would
be so high as to make nuclear energy more expensive than fossil fuels.
***
Ultimately, the decision to keep insurance on nuclear plants to a minimum is a way of supporting the industry.
“Capping the insurance was a clear decision to provide a
non-negligible subsidy to the technology,” Klaus Toepfer, a former
German environment minister and longtime head of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), said.
As I've previously noted:
In 1982, the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs received a secret report received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission called "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2".
***
In that report and other reports by the NRC in the 1980s, it was estimated
that there was a 50% chance of a nuclear meltdown within the next 20
years which would be so large that it would contaminate an area the
size of the State of Pennsylvania, which would result in huge numbers
of a fatalities, and which would cause damage in the hundreds of
billions of dollars (in 1980s dollars).
Similarly, renowned physicist Michio Kaku told Democracy Now today:
The
American people have not been given the full truth, because, for
example, right north of New York City, roughly 30 miles north of where
we are right now, we have the Indian Point nuclear power plant, and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now admitted that of all the
reactors prone to earthquakes, the one right next to New York City is
number one on that list. And the government itself, back in 1980,
estimated that property damage would be on the order of about $200
billion in case of an accident, in 1980 dollars [more than $500 billion in today's dollars], at the Indian Point nuclear power station.
But AP notes that doesn't include the real costs:
The
cost of a nuclear meltdown at the Indian Point reactors some 24 miles
north of New York City has been estimated at up to $416 billion in a
2009 study. But that does not take into full account the impact on one
of the world’s busiest metropolises.
“Indeed, a worst-case
scenario could lead to the closure of New York City for years, as
happened at Chernobyl, ... leading to almost unthinkable costs,”
University of Pennsylvania’s Howard Kunreuther and Columbia University’s
Geoffrey Heal said.
Japan's economy was already on the ropes prior to Fukushima. America's economy is already on the ropes, and yet a U.S. nuclear accident could be a lot worse than Japan
As I wrote on April 8th:
Whenever there is a disaster, those responsible claim it was "unforeseeable" so as to escape blame.
For example:
- It happened with 9/11
- It happened with the financial crisis
- It happened with the Japanese nuclear accident
The big boys gamble with our lives and our livelihoods,
because they make a killing by taking huge risks and cutting costs.
And when things inevitably go South, they aren't held responsible (other
than a slap on the wrist), and may even be bailed out by the
government.
And as I noted
the same day, nuclear accidents, oil spills and financial meltdowns all
happen for the same reason ... the big boys cutting every possible
corner in order to make more money:
[Nobel prize winning economist Joseph] Stiglitz wrote Wednesday:
The
entire financial sector was rife with agency problems and
externalities. Ratings agencies had incentives to give good ratings to
the high-risk securities produced by the investment banks that were
paying them. Mortgage originators bore no consequences for their
irresponsibility, and even those who engaged in predatory lending or
created and marketed securities that were designed to lose did so in
ways that insulated them from civil and criminal prosecution.
This
brings us to the next question: are there other "black swan" events
waiting to happen? Unfortunately, some of the really big risks that we
face today are most likely not even rare events. The good news is that
such risks can be controlled at little or no cost. The bad news is
that doing so faces strong political opposition - for there are people
who profit from the status quo.
We
have seen two of the big risks in recent years, but have done little
to bring them under control. By some accounts, how the last crisis was
managed may have increased the risk of a future financial meltdown.
Too-big-to
fail banks, and the markets in which they participate, now know that
they can expect to be bailed out if they get into trouble. As a result
of this "moral hazard", these banks can borrow on favourable terms,
giving them a competitive advantage based not on superior performance
but on political strength. While some of the excesses in risk-taking
have been curbed, predatory lending and unregulated trading in obscure
over-the-counter derivatives continue. Incentive structures that
encourage excess risk-taking remain virtually unchanged.
So, too,
while Germany has shut down its older nuclear reactors, in the US and
elsewhere, even plants that have the same flawed design as Fukushima
continue to operate. The nuclear industry’s very existence is
dependent on hidden public subsidies - costs borne by society in the
event of nuclear disaster, as well as the costs of the still-unmanaged
disposal of nuclear waste. So much for unfettered capitalism!
***
In
the end, those gambling in Las Vegas lose more than they gain. As a
society, we are gambling – with our big banks, with our nuclear power
facilities, with our planet. As in Las Vegas, the lucky few - the
bankers that put our economy at risk and the owners of energy companies that put our planet at risk - may walk off with a mint. But on average and almost certainly, we as a society, like all gamblers, will lose.
That, unfortunately, is a lesson of Japan’s disaster that we continue to ignore at our peril.
The
bottom line is that if we continue to let the top 1% - who are never
satisfied, but always want more, more, more - run the show [in a
cavalier, staggeringly risky manner] without challenge from the other
99% of people in the world, we will have more Fukushimas, more Gulf oil
spills and more financial meltdowns.
»
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The problem with Fukushima Dai-chi was not about nuclear power, but with managerial incompetence. The Tokyo Electric P power Co never considered the possibility of a 9.0 Earthquake and a 70 foot tsunami, so they placed its power plant at the worse location: sea level.
Another electric company had a reactor on the coast which was even closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, yet it escaped unscathed. How? They had the foresight to place the reactor on a 90 foot bluff, so it never got flooded.
Chernobyl’s meltdown was the result of a test with most of the safety mechanism’s disengaged. This was human error and bad management decisions in both cases. Fortunately, designs have gotten much better in the last forty years since Fukushima Dai-chi was built.
Why were the original reactors still being run after forty years? Why weren’t they replaced with safer designs? Simple, TEPCo is a regulated monopoly and regulated monopolies have no competition which forces them to gage risks accurately.
So, blame two things: TEPCo’s original decision to place the plant where it could be flooded and a nuclear regulatory agency which became captive of the monopolies it was supposed to control.
Claiming that nuclear power is unsafe is foolish: there are no safe industries. Coal Fired power plants kill six times as many people as nuclear and put more radiation in the air due to Thorium in the fly ash. Newer reactors could not meltdown even if flooded like Fukushima.
Why don't we attack the "Communistic" Nuclear advocates who want society to shoulder the risks?
stuxnet = skynet ??
Nuclear may be the FINAL SOLUTION. the 666 energy source
Don’t get me wrong, I have always had faith in U.S engineering, government, and courts/law. The last few years have not proved that out.
Appologies...will not delete extra posts
A D F
Must read/view.
Happy Earth Day 2011 American Experience Documentary "Earth Days" .....
http://goodthoughtsgoodwordsgooddeeds.blogspot.com/2011/04/happy-earth-d...
Must read/view.
Happy Earth Day 2011 American Experience Documentary "Earth Days" .....
http://goodthoughtsgoodwordsgooddeeds.blogspot.com/2011/04/happy-earth-d...
Must read/view
...Happy Earth Day 2011 American Experience Documentary "Earth Days" .....
http://goodthoughtsgoodwordsgooddeeds.blogspot.com/2011/04/happy-earth-d...
Mon dieu! I have to take this personally, Japan's electric utility 'poissoning' my spinach and sea food. What am I to eat?
Jif?
Best to blame the '1%-ers', no, not the Hell's Angels, the Uberwealthy! It's all their fault! Let's run out and buy something in a store, to make ourselves feel better. You buy a gun, I'll buy some silver. "Take that, J. P. Morgan- Chase!"
Whew! It was touch- and go there, for a minute!
Funny thing is, the solution to all of these pesky problems is found in one word, "Less". Use less electricity (horrors!), get rid of the car and the teevee (Never, will have to pry my cold, dead fingers!), don't eat meat (and give up Big Macs forever? Noooo!), buy only what you need (and never take another vacation? You fucking communist!).
Less is the easy solution, enough less and the big shots go out of business, you know ... those '1%' oppressors that piss everyone off. "Less" puts the reactor operators out of busness, along with the hated Koch Brothers, the imbecilic auto manufacturers, the grasping banks and the energy businesses that pretty much epitomize business plan futility by taking perfectly good capital and burning it up.
Less is the beginning ... keep in mind that the outcome of our 'More- Based Economy' is going to be a lot less ... anyway.
The solution is in less as well as looking in the mirror. It is time to start questioning assumptions. Start with what 'money' is and 'progress'. This is an exercise that cannot be avoided.
Get ready, here it comes ...
Our "current society" is based on growth, without that, it collapses. Or maybe changes into something else.
My grandparents, lived in a world without electricity, cars/tractors or fossil fuel (with the expection of coal, which they did not use). They lived well and long (late 80's) and died quickly and relatively peacefully. For the most part so did 12 of their 13 children... (same life span as parents).
To date "my generation" of our family (over 250) have not lived as long, and the deaths I have watched in this "generation of family" (more than I care to count), have been prolonged, with much suffering and pain..... of which our health care industry generates enormous profits from.....
I wonder what the lives of the next two generations will be like......
Lets face it, Japan is toast. There is no coming back. 100s of square miles around Fukushima will be uninhabitable for decades to come. The waters around Japan will be polluted for years, and one would have to be crazy to eat fish from the seas. Radiation will fly across the nation, polluting the farm land making food production a dead industry. Can't live there, can't eat there. So I repeat, Japan is toast.
http://www.TheAngryGrapes.Com
Arkansas nuclear 1 and 2 in Russellville used to have a parking lot for fisherman. The cooling water outlet channel was a great winter fishing spot because of the relatively warmer water.
I remember many times standing right over the initial water outlet not 100 yards from two containment buildings pulling out one white bass after another. Thousands of people have eaten fish from that outlet channel. We were more trusting then. It was rare to see the security guard shack occupied.
I will google earth it after this post. The little concrete bridge where the cooling water first came out was my favorite spot.
What a different world we live in now.
I'm an Arkie and I've got 3 words for you:
New Madrid Fault
http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/sitemap.htm
BTW: So's ya'll don't sound stoopid (like all ya'll ain't from around here), it's pronounced Ma'-drid. Emphasis on the first syllable.
There are still a lot of people that fish in the near vicinity ;)
OT- hey george ,have you seen this ? is it the real thing ? You are one of the few people who keeps an I on this .
http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/the-oil-is-still-gushing-in-th...
There is also a larger global effect that perhaps one country cannot quantify.
A world without nuclear would have even higher geopolitical tension due to increased fossil fuel scarcity.
The dynamics of energy use are complex.
The not in my backyard / nation meme has consequences also.
Pity Guinness cannot run our cars and power plants!
Have you seen this George? What's your reaction? No pun intended. Doesn't look good. Maybe see you in Rio.
http://transport.nilu.no/browser/fpv_fuku?fpp=conccol_Xe-133_;region=NH
japanese reactors at fukushima , malfunction courtesy of israeli mossad.
remember, i said israeli security company was in charge of security at japanese nuclear plants. this company is headquartered where? in dimona in the negev. give me a break.......duh?????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anpYpA8jsUk&feature=youtu.be
now it will coming here too. i told you these people are lunatics.
george, what do you think of this?
also i have another interesting one here as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID544Sfujmo
after watching these two, i am going on personal full alert. going to the store tomorrow for water, rice and beans etc.......ordering more freeze dried food. i think something bad comes this way. i am up high in central texas. i think i will be ok here. i know it sounds crazy. but maybe not. i have seen this stuff before......
High Plains--read your first post-the pieces sure seem to fit together. What the hell has the so called leaders of this country gotten the USA into?? 9/11 and now this potentially. You're right these Bas-turds are nuts. The coincidences are just too much. Thanks for the post. Milestones
Nuclear Power risk-takers remind me of a song:
The Gambler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS7IM5TG-nc
Come on sing along if you still aren't A'glowin'.......
Yoshi, blow that jug.....
When you do something that never really made sense in the first place, you have to expect to look stupid later, regardless how much you wanted it to be smart.
The junkies are running the pharmacy. Allowing the financial elites to make their own rules and enforce their own regulations has brought the nation to the brink of collapse. The entire peak oil scenario can be laid at their feet, they want to milk every drop of oil from the ground as every drop means more money accruing to the oligarchy. A peanut farmer from Georgia set up a fledgling alternative fuels program and even put solar panels on the White House roof, an actor from California had them removed and 3 decades later we still don't have a functioning alternative energy policy. Nuclear power only looks good when you have nothing else to compare it to.
Our technologies are imperfect as our laws and enforcement. If the Nuclear Regulatory agencies are as comptent as the SEC we're all boned. Its funny we don't have enough money to fund social security or medicare, but we've got trillions to give to corporations. Trillions in subsidized nuclear insurance.
Lets face it when a U.S. reactor finally bites the big one, like Russia or Japan, the taxpayers are gonna get stuck footing the bill and the owners will go tits up after liquidating all their assets through money laundering at their favorite too big to fail bank.
This would be a great Mel Brooks comedy if it weren't real. Instead its a nightmare we can't wake up from.
How did that peanut farmer and that actor get up on the White House roof? Sounds like an unforeseeable security breach.
When weighing risk there is a big difference between being in an auto accident that you didn't see coming and sticking your hand in the blender to see if the blades really will cut off your fingers. Some risk is just not worth it.
being in an unforeseen auto crash was unforeseeable.
This is all pretty much girlie scare talk. The kind I used to hear around campfires late at night. We have had the worst nuclear accidents ever imaginable already. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Nagasaki&Hiroshima, and 500 atmospheric nuclear tests. We have experience with these kinds of disasters. Life goes on. If you are pissing and moaning about $15 trillion dollar disasters get acquainted with far worse:
My point? There are huge numbers of potentially lethal actions that are taken with very little oversight. It's not that we can't do better with nuclear power but don't lose you head about potential risks. Life is risky and then you die.
"We have had the worst nuclear accidents ever imaginable already. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Nagasaki&Hiroshima, and 500 atmospheric nuclear tests. We have experience with these kinds of disasters."
We don't set off nuclear weapons at all anymore rational scientist finally shouted down the retards that kept saying it was safe. There isn't any question about the damage caused by fallout the only thing in question is the extent of the damage and that is due to government cover-ups. Chernobyl isn't over, Chernobyl is still a major problem that needs billions of dollars that the Ukraine doesn't have just to band-aid the problem. There are indications that the ground water of Kiev is becoming contaminated without any means to mitigate other than raising the allowable exposure rates. The USSR dropped the mess on the Ukraine after their collapse. It has been 25 years and they still don't have a plan for dismantling the mess once they re-cover it with new sarcophagus. Three Mile Island isn't even close to what could actually happen never mind what the morons in reactor design and siting imagine. If Indian Point NPP fails on a day the winds are blowing to New York city they'll need to extend the INES scale to 11 to categorize the devastation. Chernobyl would have had 1000's of immediate deaths if the winds were blowing to Kiev instead the largely uninhabited "Red" Forest and beyond. Fukushima would be a lot worse if the accident happened during the summer onshore wind . As a matter of fact the nuclear industry owes its existence to favorable winds and BULLSHIT!
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3703346
http://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/?p=2191
Why is Chernobyl singled out when coal burning power plants put as much radiation into the environment every year as Chernobyl? Coal seams filter escaping gasses, from deep in the earth, to depost concentrations of Uranium and Thorium averaging 1-20 parts per million. Burn the coal and the radioactive elements go up in the air and into the fly ash. The fly ash is mixed with cement and we build our buildings with it. That which is in the air ...
So what's safer, nuclear or coal?
coal, without question. the last time an accident at a coal plant rendered 5% of Europe's farmland permanently unusable (like Chernobyl) was never. the last time all the families of coal miners trapped in a disaster had to evacuate their homes forever (like Fukushima) was never. There are no atolls in the Pacific rendered uninhabitable for the next 300,000 years by coal testing. How much of this should I type?
You are an awful human being.
Can't take it, Ted? Go back to kindergarten.
"Go back to kindergarten."
Good Lord!
Your juvenile retort in no way undermines Ted's observation.
Clint, I present to you, Stuck on Zero. Stuck On Zero, meet Clint".
Now, with those formalities taken care of, I can now safely say; "Two fools met."
Never made it there dude. I was a pre-K dropout.
And since you humor me, on behalf of our home viewers:
http://rememberbuilding7.org/wp-content/w3tc/pgcache/_index.html.gzip
This is all pretty much girlie scare talk. The kind I used to hear around campfires late at night. We have had the worst nuclear accidents ever imaginable already. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Nagasaki&Hiroshima, and 500 atmospheric nuclear tests. We have experience with these kinds of disasters. Life goes on. If you are pissing and moaning about $15 trillion dollar disasters get acquainted with far worse:
My point? There are huge numbers of potentially lethal actions that are taken with very little oversight. It's not that we can't do better with nuclear power but don't lose you head about potential risks. Life is risky and then you die.
Sign me up for the STD from the hot momma followed by the nasty alien space invaders. Sex, guns, spaceships....."...shoot a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
C'mon now, Trekkies don't get laid. (thank god)
We can just move. I have my eye on a nice villa on the planet Neblitron.
The property bubble on Neblitron was unforeseeable.
Meanwhile
pity this busy monster,manunkind,not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victum(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
-electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born-pity poor flesh
and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if-listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go
- e. e. cummings
the US needs cheap whores to survive
Speaking of whores:
US ambassador helps promote Fukushima products
"The US Ambassador to Japan has bought a bottle of sake made in Fukushima Prefecture in a show of support for people suffering from the nuclear accident."
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/21_36.html
I thought they were doing a pretty good job bankrupting the country. Did we really need to give them another option?
Thorium Bitchez.
Thorium Bitchez.
Shovel ready Hidro bitches more.
http://www.hidroonline.com/
I'd never heard of this. This leads me to wonder why greens are so married to wind and solar that they never seem to mention anything else.
You'd have to ask my distant relative Al Gore that. Having just watched Max Kieser interview his latest guest about how the Koch brothers, a couple of billionaires, have bankrolled and thereby co-opted the Tea Party as conduits for their own ends, the green movement's myopia is understandable.
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-140-max-tea/
The green movement has been captured by moneyed interests as well.
Hidro will not receive loan extensions from banks or from govts, as this technology does not fit the criteria in support of the Great Printing Ponzi.
All movements become captured as they form into institutions, due to the high ROI they provide. Better yet, since most form into non-profits, it becomes a tax-free way to purchase the world.
http://vimeo.com/22706805
experts discuss radiation and its consequences........