Mark Clayton at the Christian Science Monitor looks into it.
This describes my position quite well:
But for those energy experts who have done life-cycle analysis of nuclear power, the big concern is that policymakers may be misled into believing that just because nuclear CO2 emissions are low, the cost of nuclear as an option to address climate change would be a bargain. Better, they say, to take the huge amounts of money needed for nuclear plants and use it to build lower-cost solutions that will displace more coal.
"It's easy to show that building more reactors makes climate change worse than it should have been," says Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank in Snowmass, Colo. "That's because a dollar put into new reactors gives two to 10 times less climate solution for the amount of coal-power displaced than if you had bought cheaper solutions with the same dollars."
That's just it. The question is not whether nuclear power is "acceptable" or "good" by some subjective standard -- economic, moral, or otherwise. It's not even whether investments in nuclear power could lead to emission reductions. The question is: what is the maximum amount of climate change mitigation we can get for a given dollar of investment? Nuclear fails that test.
Then there's this:
Environmental groups, too, are well aware of the conundrum surrounding the claim of carbon-free energy. Most of them maintain that nuclear is not the answer to climate change.
But their antinuclear arguments have centered on environmental damage from nuclear waste, potential accidents, and terror threats.
Is that true? I don't really know. But to the extent it is, I'd like to see a lot more emphasis on the former argument. "What's the cheapest, fastest way to get what we want?" That way of asking the question bypasses many of the charged moral and historical arguments that have made nuclear power such a divisive issue.
Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy
Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions
Will South Carolina become the nation’s new Yucca Mountain?
Comments
View as Flat
Zarkov Posted 9:41 am
07 Mar 2007
just get it right, right at the start...
solutions devoid of pressure/lobby groups and other anti-LIFE activities.
LOL, but then in a mad mad mad world, y'all would not recognise such solutions even if they were upfront and running.
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Karen Street Posted 11:44 pm
07 Mar 2007
The article is misleading in that it cites "energy experts" on both sides of the GHG emissions argument, as if an interest in and writing about an issue makes you an expert. Experts cited by policy people reached a different conclusion on GHG emissions from nuclear power, and one is cited in the article. The world governments and businesses will be using GHG data for their analyses, and you can bet that the people committed to reducing the world's GHG emissions as rapidly as possible are not going to be using the work of "energy experts" whose work has never been peer reviewed.
The second part of the quote refers to lower cost methods of displacing coal. These exist: greater efficiency and conservation are the primary ones. According to an analysis by Joseph F. DeCarolis and David W. Keith (2006). The Economics of Large Scale Wind Power in a Carbon Constrained World, the carbon tax needed to eliminate new coal power plants is half the carbon tax needed to bring wind power on line, and solar power is even more expensive.
Many improvements can be made in efficiency, mandating high efficiency bulbs in most applications, etc. More research dollars are needed, more mandates are needed. But improvements in efficiency work only to a point, and then become expensive -- can we really get to 0 using improvements in efficiency alone? Conservation is a great one, and one I process with students, a lot, but I'm going to wait until I see a bigger change in public behavior before I count on it to provide a wedge. And we need some dozen wedges, maybe more.
We in both the rich and developing countries need to reduce GHG emissions a lot, and now. China built 100 GW in coal power last year, one year. It's hard to believe, that's why I repeat it. Texas still plans to build coal power plants. Worldwide, coal is a big ticket item.
Recommendation: people who advocate renewables might not want to use the "nuclear power costs more than coal power" argument. Nuclear power no longer costs more than natural gas power, at least in the US, though deregulated utilities favor low capital cost, high fuel cost projects such as natural gas over cheaper sources of electricity like nuclear power.
I support solar power, etc, though solar power may not be as cheap as nuclear power by mid-century. My state has undertaken a massive subsidy of solar power, which I and everyone I know supports wholeheartedly. The goal, with billions spent on subsidies from both the US and California, is to have solar provide as much electricity in 2017 as 40% of a nuclear power plant could.
If your goal is to reduce GHG emissions by renewables only, we can probably get a 60% reduction using only renewables, efficiency, and some voluntary cutbacks. But how long will this take? And how many lives will be lost? How many species will go extinct?
It seems to me heartless to not include humans and other species when making these kinds of decisions. WHO estimates that more than 150,000 people are dying each year from climate change, and many more are dying from direct coal pollution. Climate change will soon be killing at a higher rate. To me, simple love of people and other species would require us to reduce GHG emissions as rapidly as possible.
Karen Street
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Palaces Posted 7:43 am
08 Mar 2007
Here's a link, the most current published on the IEA website whose supposed to be tracking things like this. It covered 130 various power plants on several continents of every major type of power production. The data was gathered in 2003 but the report was finished and published in 2005 making it look more current than it is.
Page 153 (155 PDF) http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf
Technology nth of a kind capital cost capital cost(2003 $kW)
Advanced nuclear $1,167 2003 prices are now 4 years outdated.
Geothermal $1,475
Landfill gas $1,426
Photovoltaic $1,173
Solar thermal na
Biomass $1,308
Wind $887
Pulverised coal $1,127
IGCC Coal $980
Nat. gas combined cycle $538
Combustion turbine $380
ABOVE is extracted from the USA prices.
Virtually all of the prices are not only wrong, they are very wrong in 2007. The prices given are for plant only, omitting fuel costs, O&M, wastes disposal, and decommissioning.
You would have to study the report in much greater depth and have access to a lot of other background materials to even understand what you are seeing.
IGCC exists only in two smaller plants and is not proven at commercial volumes yet.
Capacity factors matter. The prices given are based on peak production, which is only true 28% of the time for PV, about 38% of the time for optimally sited onshore wind, 85% of the time for pulverized coal. Further manipulations of these numbers is required to equalize the cost factors fairly.
It is premature to do decision-making, when actual reliable numbers are so difficult to compare.
Instead of making choices on half-assed numbers, you, me, others interested in this subject, need to devote 100 pairs of eyes to data-mining the world knowledgebase and collecting the best numbers on one collaborative spreadsheet so everything is lined up side by side by side.
Here's an example from last month, one of two plants was approved at current 2007 price estimates close to $2/watt.
http://www.newsobserver.com/666/story/511525.html
1,600 MW max capacity price tag has soared to $3 billion ... Just two months ago, Duke Energy had reported to state utility regulators that the twin coal plants plants would cost $2 billion... Duke Energy's $2 billion estimate was based on year-and-a-half old industry projections
Coal and Nuke plant construction is competition for each other and a small pool of skilled builders.
http://www.duke-energy.com/news/releases/1999/Nov/1999111 ...
Duke Power's coal-fired plants generated more than 42 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 1998, 51 percent of the company's total electricity output, with an impressive average heat-rate of 9,382 Btu/kWh.
http://www.cleanenergy.org/programs/hottopic.cfm?ID=71
1600-megawatt pulverized coal two new units (800 MW each)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type= ...
Old price estimates of $1,000 per kilowatt for coal plants and $500 for natural-gas plants "have probably doubled," Crane said.
Wind is stranded in many places. Regardless of the power cost at the windfield, it now cost well over a megabuck per mile to carry it to point of use on new transmission lines that meltdown in icestorms. There have been over 1,000,000 customer blackout days since New Year's Day 2007 in the USA from ever more severe climate change.
Here's prices given in February, 2007 to the Texas Power Commission about not particularly stranded Northern TX windfields:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.energy/msg/324bfba4c6e ...
Key points:
$1.5 billion transmission system
$10 billion power plants
3 years
800 miles
TX currently 2,849 megawatts of capacity.
1,800 MW Airtricity proposal
Other partners would add another 2,400 megawatts of wind power,
2,000 megawatts of gas-fired electric power and 1,800 megawatts of
coal-fired power.
* TXU proposed $10 billion to build 11 coal-fired 8,600 MW power
plants.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/0 ...
Texas companies plan wind, gas, coal power plants
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.energy/msg/b1e49f2200f ...
Derived facts (from sources cited at below)
$1.5B transmission lines / 800 miles length = $1.875 million per mile
connecting remote windfields by wire.
4,200 MW / 1M homes = 4,200 Watts/home ???
$10B project - $1.5 transmission lines = $8.5B power
1.8 MW + 2.4 MW = 4.2 MW wind
2.0 MW CH4 + 1.8 MW coal = 3.8 MW carbon
$8.5B 8 MW = $10625 MW
(Carbon plant construction costs do not include recurring carbon fuel
costs)
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.energy/msg/4af0edb3602 ...
Key points:
800 miles transmission lines
1,000,000 homes powered
4,200 MW wind capable
1,800 MW wind from Airtricity
http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story.as ...
So you see, there is nothing straightforward about computing comparative costs of different power generation scales or methods.
If you don't want to do any work, that's your business, but you shouldn't be palming off bogus numbers that you haven't personally checked out.
But in fact, you lack specific numbers entirely, and rely on hearsay from RMI to crunch numbers for you without any regard for their accuracy. RMI should participate in the 100 pairs of eyes project, but not sequester it under their brandname. They have a dog in the fight and are not an objective source of information -- they make their living dependent on selling specific concepts for a couple million dollar per year.
We need source references for numbers and published ones taken from regulators is about as good as we can ever get, although sometimes fudged and padded for all that.
The Cost of PV went UP instead of down, because Germany makes utilities buy power at 55 US cents per kWh. Most of US PV was exported to Germany to cover their gold rush to cash in at $7 watt for panels in cardboard shipping boxes not installed.
All of the numbers are moving targets and none can be trusted more than two years old, but PV especially is at the mercy of world supply-strangling cartel price-fixing. The long-term trend of PV from 1979 to 2000 says that the "natural" price of PV should be under $3/watt for panels now.
$6/watt installed panels were in the news this week:
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47 ...
San Diego Unveils 1.135-MW Solar System, on 4.33 acres of rooftops, $6.5 million in capital installation. The solar power system has the capacity to produce 1.602 million
kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year.
$5.73 net installed cost per watt.
~ 50% space utilization.
3.87 hours/day average peak production.
16% capacity factor peak production.
Anybody finds fault with these numbers, please post corrections, thank you.
http:ecosyn.us PALACES for the People, H2-PV, PV-Breeders acres of PV, tons of Hydrogen
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sunflower Posted 8:26 am
08 Mar 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 9:04 am
08 Mar 2007
The Energy Blog
The decomissioning and waste costs added to the initial cost. Total, maybe $9000/kw? waste added in, that IS important.
6 billion for a turn key 1000mw reactor and 3 billion to take care of waste and decomissioning? Total cost per kwh to the customer, 25 cents per kwh?
Henrik says maybe 12 cents per kwh? Not sure but consider inflation over 10,000 years of waste storage.
The total cost of wind is around 3 cents per kwh, including all finance charges.
Stock touts are going crazy over a new bull market in uranium due to renewed nuclear plant building. how long will nuclear fuel remain cheap? it is expensive and dangerous to mine and refine, and all the easy to get deposits have been mined.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:35 am
09 Mar 2007
First off, nuclear industries pay 0.1cent per kWh for the government to deal with their waste storage. Yearly I don't know how much that ammounts to. So subtract that from the yearly total. However they also expect to get their own personal Yucca Mountain ontop of all this. Not quite sure how much the wrangling on that costs either.
However I do know that $0.5 billion per year is being handed to nuclear groups for onsite waste storage.
With a proposed budget of $0.9 billion per year for researching fast breeder reactors.
The entire US federal subsidy for solar is about $0.5 billion.
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:54 am
09 Mar 2007
world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html#wastes
Utilities have paid some $28 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund through a 0.1 cent/kWh levy towards final disposal by the government. The fund is growing by about $750 million per year.
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:54 am
09 Mar 2007
_
Only $1.2 billion for ALL renewables/effeciency programs combined.
With only $0.148 billion for ALL solar operations.
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47 ...
_
The cumulative $1.4 billion subsidy proposed for just two aspects of the nuclear subsidy budget still hold.
http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/ipfmresear ...
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:58 am
09 Mar 2007
Since that $1.4 billion dollar subsidy (Minus the 0.750B fees) only accounts for two aspects of the proposed yearly nuclear subsidy budget.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:08 am
09 Mar 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:11 am
09 Mar 2007
The Energy Policy Act 2005 subsidies are listed here:
world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html#policyAct
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:26 am
09 Mar 2007
_
Too bad none of those break out well into ongoing costs.
Wonder if theres a study done on that.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:27 am
09 Mar 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:04 am
09 Mar 2007
Definantly not a perfectly accurate source.
However if $7.1 billion / year is anywhere close to reality, that'd pretty much sink any arguement for "inexpensive nuclear power".
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Nucle ...
_
I'll look around for a more reliable source.
What ya bet I find that it exceeds $1.2 billion/year?
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:39 am
09 Mar 2007
Heh, looks like it's only $875 for 2008-2009
About 6x higher than solar.
Even if they didn't leave anything out (Which they likely did)
Thats basically the price of all other renewables combined :O
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:44 am
09 Mar 2007
Compared to the $1.2 billion for all renewables+effeciency that is indeed a pretty penny.
But I doubt that encompasses everything for nuclear. Probably skimping on the waste/security.
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JimHopf Posted 8:51 am
09 Mar 2007
Taking the total decommissioning cost and simply adding it to the capital cost is completely flawed and disingenuous. As any financial/economic expert will tell you, an up-front cost and a cost that you will not face for 60 years are entirely different things, given the powerful effect of long term interest appreciation. One only has to set aside a small per kW/hr amount in order to build up the funds necessary to decommission the plant.
Suffice it to say that most of the economic "analyses" and nuclear cost/subsidy estimates I've heard above are patently absurd. An unsubsidized cost of ~5.0-5.5 cents/kW hour is the upper bound on what new nuclear will cost. This will be cheaper than gas, and about equal to wind. Of course, its delivering steady reliable power at the roughly same cost as random, intermittent power from wind. Wind can, and should play a significant role, but it will come down to coal or nuclear for most of the supply, and nuclear is a vastly better environmental choice.
The way to sort through all this economic BS is to simply require that pollution, CO2 emissions, and/or foreign gas/oil imports be reduced, and then just let the market decide how to achieve those results. In general, it is nuclear supporters that advocate such a free and fair competition, whereas its the renewable (only) people who try to avoid this competition, and only support laws/policies that explicitly require renewables to be used as opposed to anything else. What does this tell you? If renewables are so economical, why do we need such laws requiring their use?
If any of the stuff said above were even remotely true, we wouldn't have to worry about new nukes being built, as all the utilities would be rushing to wind/renewables for all their future needs. Ain't happening for some reason. Instead, a lot of them are looking at nuclear. It's possible that the first few nukes may be as high as ~$2500/kW (vs. ~$1700) if things go badly. But figures like $6000 are simply outrageous. Follow on plants should be ~$1500.
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Reg Gahspeehs Posted 8:57 am
09 Mar 2007
bring this down to a max of 20% advantage on coal fired. Greenpeace (pre 1980s invasion by CND refugees) published a study on this in the late 80s. I suppose the globalwarmpuritans will insist 20% saving is brilliant. Oh yeah like the 80% CO2 still emitted before generation aint gonna do any harm!
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JimHopf Posted 9:05 am
09 Mar 2007
It's questionable to equate the govt. research are a pure subsidy, as much of the work does not result in any real benefit for the industry. Nonetheless, even if you take the entire $800 million per year budget and divide it by the ~800 billion kW-hrs generated annually by nuclear, the resulting "subsidy" is only ~0.1 cents/kW-hr. By contrast, govt. pays for ~1/2 of the cost of solar PV systems, which corresponds to a subsidy of over 10 cents/kW-hr; 100 times the nuclear subsidy.
Wind power gets a subsidy of 1.8 cents/kW-hr. Existing nuclear plants get none. As I mentioned above, all costs are fully paid for. The first few nuclear plants will get a temporary (~6 year) subsidy of 1.8 cents/kW-hr (like wind). After the first few (~6), however, all new plants will have to compete w/o the subsidy.
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JimHopf Posted 9:11 am
09 Mar 2007
The results of one net CO2 emissions study are at:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull4 ...
Greenpeace is simply not a remotely credible source of information.
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JMG Posted 9:16 am
09 Mar 2007
Even the very-anti-nuke German eco group Oko (umlaut in there) puts the life-cycle emissions from current nuclear power designs at 30-60 gms/kWh---compared to about a kg/kWh for coal. The total life-cycle CO2 emissions from nukes is not significantly more than wind when you look at the embedded energy of fabrication/transport, etc. for wind systems. Engineering rule 1: There just ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Nuclear's huge and somewhat-hidden subsidy is on the risk end--all of us (in the USA) are the insurers of last resort, thanks to the magic of Price-Anderson, which limits operator liability to a laughably low number.
It's difficult to put a value on this subsidy since it appears that, for all intents and purposes, it exceeds all the money in the industry, as in no utility would go within a mile of a nuke project without it.
Any apples-to-apples comparison of nukes vs. other forms of electric generation has to assign a value per kWh to this subsidy.
It shows that the prices quoted for nukes are deceptively low.
Nevertheless, it is starting to appear that, as the guy on Realclimate.org wrote in his excellent article "A catastrophe in slow motion," environmentalists may need to make a "grand bargain" on nukes vs. coal, allowing the construction of a new nuke for every two big coal burners taken out of commission (or something like that).
That's not ideal--preferably we do away with central station power plants entirely, particularly low efficiency systems (like coal and nukes), for all the reasons that Lovins enumerated in "Small is Profitable."
But, meantime, HUGE plasma-screen TVs and equally side-by-side refrigerator/freezers and heated towel bars are FLYING off the shelves at bix box stores all over the US.
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sunflower Posted 9:22 am
09 Mar 2007
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GRLCowan Posted 9:23 am
09 Mar 2007
The generation itself may be more or less but the enormous amount of fossil energy used in the fuel cycle (unless you know of solar powered bulldozers and dumptrucks) and construction for a plant with maybe 50 years life bring this down to a max of 20% advantage on coal fired.
That is the thrust of the "Lying Dutchman" study. In truth the savings are in the high 90s percent.
The UK has appointed a Sustainable Development Commission to dig up assessments of how much CO2 is emitted, and in section 4.4 of their Paper 2:
Reducing CO2 emissions - nuclear and the alternatives they do:
The average amount of CO2 emitted by nuclear power in Western Europe is estimated at 16tCO2/MWh for a Pressurised Light Water Reactor (PWR)...
several sources have made estimates around this figure...
By contrast, coal emits around 891tCO2/MWh while gas is around 356tCO2/MWh...
(Section 4.7)
... in a low carbon economy, the indirect emissions from nuclear power, along with other low carbon technologies, would be substantially reduced.
Section 7.2 gives references, many of them web-accessible.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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birdboy Posted 9:58 am
09 Mar 2007
centralized vs decentralized
toxic waste vs impaired view
terrorist target vs vandal target
big corporations vs small companies
non-renewable vs renewable
Unfortunately, the choice will be made by CEO's meeting behind closed doors with the likes of Cheney, not by informed citizens.
a liberal in redsville
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:53 pm
09 Mar 2007
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefi ...
Still better than coal (~1000 gCO2/kwh) or natural gas (~400 gCO2/kwh).
But it loses it's parity with renewables which are farther down in the (30-10 gCO2/kwh) range.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:27 pm
09 Mar 2007
However the solar and biomass ones certainly aren't using thinfilm CIGS solar panels or algae biomass.
As is, Nuclear makes up about 6% of the grid, while renewables are about 8%
So then it really comes down to more of a question of bang for your buck, and building speed.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2007/2007-02-05-02.asp ...
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=23 ...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0531/p02s01-uspo.html
So far it looks like Bush doesn't like energy effeciency.
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JMG Posted 11:28 pm
09 Mar 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007 ...
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JimHopf Posted 9:10 am
10 Mar 2007
Even the study linked below, which was done by a group opposed to Price Anderson, estimates the "subsidy" at 355 million to 3.4 billion a year.
http://www.taxpayer.net/energy/priceanderson.htm
This may sound like a lot, but when you divide by nuclear's annual generation of ~780 billion kW-hrs, you get a subsidy of only ~0.04 to 0.4 cents/kW-hr. And once again, this is very conservative estimate (from opposing groups), which is almost certainly based on assumed accident probabilities that are too high, and accident consequences that are vastly too high.
Many of us (engineers) believe that, based on the real consequences of a Western plant accident, and its probability of occurrance, that $10 billion is more than enough coverage, and that the premium that the industry is paying for that coverage is probably excessive. Given that, Price Anderson is not a subsidy at all.
One must also put Price Anderson in perspective, relative to the "deal" that fossil plants get. The whole issue is about whether nuclear has sufficient coverage against the damages caused by an extremely unlikely severe meltdown event. The underlying idea is that, of course, if nuclear ever emits any significant pollution, everyone in the entire region should be paid handsome compensation for any resulting health effects and economic losses. That's funny, coal plants inflict massive health costs and indirect economic damaged EVERY YEAR, and never have to pay one red cent in compensation!!
A complete double standard. Nuclear emits no pollution, and never has any impact on public health, but must buy coverage to pay compensation if it ever does. Meanwhile, fossil plants continuiously inflicts large health and economic damages but doesn't pay any compensation. People's response? They agonize over whether nuclear (which has never polluted) is paying enough for its insurance. This as opposed to asking coal to pay for its continous damage, or perhaps (what a concept) asking coal to stop inflicting continuous damage.
Just to quantify things, according to EPA, fossil plants cause ~25,000 premature deaths, and cause ~$100 billion in indirect economic damages, every single year. Chernobyl may have caused ~10,000 eventual deaths (by conservative estimates, only ~100 deaths for sure). A severe accident at any Western plant will have far smaller consequences (~1000 or less). And the likelihood of a severe meltdown at any of the 103 US plants is estimated at 0.1% per year.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that nuclear, like coal, didn't pay anything for insurance (or compensation). According to the numbers above, nuclear has a 0.1% chance of causing ~1000 deaths, for an average of 1 person per year. This is ~25,000 times lower than coal. If we assume ~$100 billion in economic damage for a severe meltdown (equal to coal's annual cost), nuclear is lower by a factor of ~1000 (due to the once per 1000 year frequency, versus annual damage).
Estimates of fossil plant external costs (such as those done by the European Commission's ExternE study) range from ~4-8 cents/kW-hr. By my math above, nuclear's accident risk external cost would be at least 1000 times lower, or less than 0.01 cents/kW-hr. Any Price Anderson subsidy would be a fraction of that. Clearly, my analysis differs from the authors of the study I linked above, but even using their estimate, any Price Anderson subsidy, or externality, is lower by a factor of 10 to 100 smaller than the "free air pollution" subsidy enjoyed by fossil plants.
Nuclear would love to compete on any level playing field, with no subsidies, and all external costs accounted for.
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JimHopf Posted 9:13 am
10 Mar 2007
Nuclear generates ~20% of US power. Renewables may generate ~8%, but almost all of this is large-scale hydro (for which there are few, if any opportunities for expansion in the US). Non-hydro renewables (e.g., solar or wind) only make up a fraction of a percent of US generation. Perhaps they've reached ~1% by now.
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:22 am
10 Mar 2007
[...]
coal plants inflict massive health costs and indirect economic damaged EVERY YEAR, and never have to pay one red cent in compensation
Nuclear power has a special liability -- it is particularly easy to sue. That makes comparisons of actual health effects irrelevant. People living downwind from nuclear accidents will easily win in court, and those people will need to be paid -- regardless of any actual physical injury.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is largely responsible for nuclear's special legal liability. To continue enjoying its mandate for extreme regulation of nuclear activities, those activities must be considered dangerous. The NRC thus has incentive to promote fallacious claims of nuclear danger, and to ignore evidence of nuclear benignity.
It continuously gets easier for citizens and organizations to protect themselves from the effects of accidental radionuclide release. This occurs in mainly two ways:
Technology for designing and constructing cost-effective atmosphere-controlled secure-buildings continuously improves.
Neutriceutical technology for indirectly (via maintaining youthful health), mid-directly (via blocking tissue or organ uptake of, or chelating, radioisotopes) and directly (via protecting against DNA damage, inflammation, and free radicals) protecting from radiotoxic effects continuously improves and continuously drops in price.
The NRC, logically, should not be in any hurry to let anyone know that, lest it lose a principal reason for its existence.
Nuclear power continuously becomes less dangerous, but that is irrelevant to the issue of accident insurance since nuclear power -- due to its reputation -- is easy to sue, regardless of any actual nuclear danger.
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JMG Posted 12:35 pm
10 Mar 2007
Because, in America, people generally have to pay their own court costs, which means that it's not enough to have a deep pocket defendant floating around ... you have to be able to show damages, and that the conduct of the defendant caused those losses, AND that such conduct was not protected by an immunity. With nukes, you would have to show not just the damage but also that the operator was negligent. Otherwise you simply bankrupt yourself.
If nukes are as easy to sue as you say, why then there must be a lot of successful suits against nuclear operators, becuase there are plenty of anti-nuclear folks and plenty of hungry lawyers out there.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:07 pm
10 Mar 2007
Nuclear power continuously becomes less dangerous
Once its snug inside a standard U235 reactor, or dry cask storage, thats not so much the issue.
The issue is when you involve plutonium reactors, and haul high level waste cross country.
_
Furthermore, regardless of what deals were made 40 years agp.
I doubt the currently wealthy Nevada will go down without a fight for any nuclear waste to be shipped to a site a mere 30 miles away from Las Vegas.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:24 pm
10 Mar 2007
world-nuclear.org/info/inf67.html
the Price Anderson Act [...] now provides $10 billion in cover [...] without fault needing to be proven.
[...]
More than $200 million has been paid in claims and costs of litigation since the Price- Anderson Act came into effect, all of it by the insurance pools. Of this amount, some $71 million related to litigation following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
[...]
Japan is not party to any international liability convention but its law generally conforms to them. Plant operator liability is exclusive and absolute [...] liability is unlimited. In relation to the 1999 Tokai-mura fuel plant criticality accident, insurance covered 1 billion yen and the parent company (Sumitomo) paid the balance of 13.5 billion yen.
.
JMG wrote: in America, people generally have to pay their own court costs
From the above link:
More than $200 million has been paid in claims and costs of litigation since the Price- Anderson Act came into effect, all of it by the insurance pools. Of this amount, some $71 million related to litigation following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island..
Again, negligence on the part of the public is an enabling condition for nuclear power to be dangerous. Secure-construction magnate David South has pointed out that natural disasters do not exist without the enabling condition of negligence on the part of the public:
monolithic.com/pres/disaster/index.html
When is a Disaster Not a Disaster?
[...]
the question is "is it a disaster if nothing bad happens?"
[...]
Four years ago, I watched a tornado hit my office with me in it. If it had not destroyed other property it would never have been known as a tornado. Had I been in a conventional building it would have been a disaster with me very much involved. As it was there was only mild inconvenience - it broke the power pole off next to the office at ground level causing a power outage.
As with natural would-be disasters, so with nuclear would-be disasters. Both types of disasters are conditional. A necessary condition for a disaster is for potential "victims" to neglect to protect themselves. Today, potential nuclear disaster victims have the options of living and working in secure, positive-pressure, HEPA-filtered, atmosphere-controlled buildings; and of placing themselves on radioprotective neutriceutical regimens. The more-widespread adoption of these precautionary measures become, the more nuclear would-be "disasters" will simply be non-events.
As I asserted in my previous message to this thread, the NRC does not have a rational interest in the public knowing about these protective measures, because a lack of nuclear danger would resolve any need for the NRC.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:33 pm
10 Mar 2007
It is 100 miles from Las Vegas.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain
Yucca Mountain is located in a remote desert on federally protected land within the secure boundaries of the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada. It is approximately 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:18 pm
10 Mar 2007
Today, potential nuclear disaster victims have the options of living and working in secure, positive-pressure, HEPA-filtered, atmosphere-controlled buildings; and of placing themselves on radioprotective neutriceutical regimens. The more-widespread adoption of these precautionary measures become, the more nuclear would-be "disasters" will simply be non-events.
So any disaster is the fault of those who live near a plant? They can live and work in labratory grade hepa filtered environs? Who will pay to convert homes to this level of contamination security?
Nuclear government/industry has not even provided the minimum safety precautions, iodine pills and radiation suits for emergency personnel, firefighters, emergency medical teams, and hospitals. Thete are mnot even any evacuation plans!
Renewable energy installations will not force people living nearby to cower inside in hepa filtered skinner boxes like lab rats.
Keep talking buddy!! Great job fighting against nuclear power!!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:56 pm
10 Mar 2007
What are "the minimum safety precautions", and why do you think they have not been met?
.
Amazingdrx wrote: iodine pills
These are available, along with thousands of other radioprotective neutriceuticals, on the internet and at brick-and-mortar supplement and natural-foods retailers nationwide.
.
Amazingdrx wrote: radiation suits for emergency personnel
What is a radiation suit?
.
Amazingdrx wrote: Thete are mnot even any evacuation plans
What makes you think there is no evacuation plan for Diablo Canyon?
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter15.html#5
Q: If reactors are safe, why are there evacuation plans for areas around them?
A: This is an example of regulatory ratcheting by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Until 1980, there were no such plans, and they are not used in other countries. There are no evacuation plans around chemical plants, although evacuations in their vicinity are more likely to be necessary than around nuclear plants. Most evacuations occur as a result of railroad or truck accidents involving toxic chemicals, but there is no advanced planning for them. It would be difficult to dispute the NRC viewpoint that having evacuation plans increases safety to some extent. They gave no consideration to the fact that the existence and advertising of these plans is unsettling to the public.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:11 pm
10 Mar 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 11:25 pm
10 Mar 2007
What is a radiation suit?Amazingdrx wrote: Thanks for confirming my information.
What is a radiation suit?
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:18 am
11 Mar 2007
Technology for designing and constructing cost-effective atmosphere-controlled secure-buildings continuously improves.
Neutriceutical technology for indirectly (via maintaining youthful health), mid-directly (via blocking tissue or organ uptake of, or chelating, radioisotopes) and directly (via protecting against DNA damage, inflammation, and free radicals) protecting from radiotoxic effects continuously improves and continuously drops in price.[...]
Nuclear power continuously becomes less dangerous
GreyFlcn wrote: NucBuddy,
Nuclear power continuously becomes less dangerous
Once its snug inside a standard U235 reactor, or dry cask storage
Your reply constitutes both an equivocation and a straw man.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
I was not referring to specific radionuclides themselves becoming less dangerous through their own natural decay. I was instead referring to nuclear enterprise becoming less dangerous through the advancements of universally-obtainable risk-reductive technologies (including, but not exclusive to, radioprotective-neutriceuticals).
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JimHopf Posted 2:31 am
12 Mar 2007
The legal precedent concerning exposure to toxic agents is that it must be more than likely (i.e., more than 50% probable) that the disease in question (e.g., cancer) occurred as a result of the exposure. This precedent has been firmly established in the US, over the last several decades, on the basis of vast numbers of toxic tort cases, involving all sorts of agents and all sorts of industries.
Based on our well-established understanding of radiation and its effects, it would require an extremely high dose (over 1000 Rem) to yield a 50% chance of cancer or any other long-term disease. This is well over the level that would cause a short-term death from acute exposure (i.e., radiation poisoning/sickness). Thus, in short, the only people who would be eligible for compensation would be those who are actually (and clearly) suffering from acute radiation sickness/death. The thing is, even the most severe meltdown scenario will not result in any members of the public getting such exposures. Even Chernobyl did not result in any acute exposures among members of the public, despite the fact that there was no immediate evacuation.
All the estimates you hear about the number of deaths from a meltdown event are hypothetical estimates of long-term cancer deaths which theoretically occur as a result of a very small cancer risk (~1% or less) spread over a very large number of people. (Note that there is much scientific disagreement as to whether these low exposures have any health effect at all, as these effects are too small to measure.) Based on the case law discussed above, none of these people would be eligible for compensation. Indeed, there have been several cases where nuclear workers have gotten cancer and tried to blame it on radiation exposure they got on the job (this, despite the fact that overall cancer rates for nuclear workers are not higher than the public at large). None of these suits resulted in compensation being awarded (I believe). These cases add to the legal precedent.
The official govt. line on Price Anderson is that its purpose is to ensure that the public receives compensation in the event of a large release. Believe it or not, the govt. line is the truth. Without Price Anderson, if a large release were to occur the industry would fight (against large-scale public compensation), and the industry would win. Few if any people would receive any compensation at all. This is why the payouts Nukebuddy referred to occurred. The claimants didn’t have to prove harm; something which they would not have succeeded in doing.
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JimHopf Posted 2:53 am
12 Mar 2007
I’m with basically NucBuddy concerning evacuation plans. They are largely an illustration of the political persecution faced by the nuclear industry. Coal plants cause ~25,000 deaths per year under normal operation. For nuclear, apparently having no health/environmental effect is not enough. Reducing the probability of an accidental release to minimal levels is still not enough. On top that, they have to have elaborate evacuation/response plans to ensure that nobody at all gets killed, even in the tiny likelihood of a severe accident. On top of THAT, they have to pay for insurance to cover anyone who gets hurt in spite of all the measures above. Note that all the reactor accident health consequences you may have heard of are conservatively based on zero evacuation (i.e., complete failure of the response plan), along with a host of other completely unrealistic assumptions. If the evacuation/response plan works as planned, no deaths result.
NucBuddy is also completely right about how other facilities such as chemical plant have far WORSE potential consequences, yet they get a complete pass, not only on evacuation requirements but security (vs. attack) requirements as well. I heard about some oil industry, refinery type facility in the Houston area. Apparently, an entirely plausible accident/attack scenario for this facility involves the release of toxins that would literally kill thousands of people (i.e., most people in the nearest town). And I’m not talking about being inflicted with a hypothetical ~1% risk of long-term cancer (as is the case with any nuclear plant scenario). I’m talking about immediate death; thousands of corpses literally lying in the street. Their response plan? Shelter in place. That is, people are instructed to go to their homes and shut the windows. There is no evacuation plan. The reason? Such a plan is impractical, because (unlike a nuclear plant scenario) the release would kill people so quickly that there is no way people could be reached, and evacuated, in time. Yet this facility is allowed to still operate (nor is it moves away from any population), it being “necessary” after all. The coal and oil industries are treated completely different from the nuclear industry. There is a complete double standard.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:00 pm
17 Mar 2007
The industry/government cabal running it has no responsibility to anyone for safety and they know it.
All the talking points you bring up are what the people running this looming catastrophe really believe. That nuclear waste is harmless. That radioactive contamination is a myth. And that storing radioactive waste in unlined leaking landfill trenches, like the landfill in South Carolina is perfectly alright.
The nuclear industry would have to change its spots and become universally responsible, clean up the messes it already made, and prove new reactor designs that will render nuclear waste harmless. In order to deserve public trust necessary to get permission to build new plants.
And it would have to do this all under complete public scrutiny by outside experts.
The resistance to any of this reform, shown by virtually all nuclear advocates I have encountered makes this very unlikely.
The whole industry would not only need to start right back at ground zero, but it would also have to correct past mistakes. And that is impossible given their current attitude. Even if that attitude changed, how could the massive cleanup needed be payed for? It can't. Not without a technology breakthrough "waste eating" reactor design.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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