"The Italian navigator has entered the new world" was the code phrase, I'm told, for the first man-made fission reactor's first turning on and off. The person responding asked something like, "How were the natives", and the answer was, "Very friendly".

Now, we're not sure, or anyway I'm not sure, exactly what meaning had been beforehand agreed upon for that third phrase. But everyone now understands that today's power reactors, like CP-1 and like the natural ones at Oklo, are thermally choked: by heating themselves up a little, they slow themselves a little. That is indeed friendly. It is why fission has a reputation for docility, and why it is seldom remarked that Al Gore took a nuclear submarine ride, and Greenpeace researchers  Eric Larsen and Lonnie Dupre repeatedly took Russian nuclear icebreaker rides. Why wouldn't they? More contained radioactivity than would be in a waste-filled Yucca Mountain? They're not stupid; they know the waste has never been a genuine concern.

That docility is not entirely good news for beneficiaries of the revenue, especially the tax revenue, attendant on events like these and these -- all of which could have been much worse. That is why they, some of them, do their damnedest to insinuate that nuclear energy is not a lifesaver.

--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996

Below is the same comment I made at Climate Progress.

The claim that PAA is a subsidy is highly debatable and of course won't be determined in this thread.

The nuclear industry, like you noted, would be liable for at least $10B in damages if an accident at a nuclear plant were to occur. The reason why some (mainly antis) consider this a subsidy is because the damage from a nuclear accident is "supposedly" many magnitudes higher than $10B. Therefore, the industry is "supposedly" paying less than what it should.

To date, the US has seen only one nuclear plant pay damages for an accident - TMI. How much did TMI pay? Well according to the Wikipedia link you use, only $70M to date. The damages, just to be clear, basically went to businesses and individuals who lost revenues and salaries due to the evacuation.

Now if the worst nuclear accident in the US cost only $70M, I would constitute that the nuclear industry is paying way more than what it should be paying. You can cite all the studies you want that try to guesstimate how much an accident would cost, but based on actual experience, the nuclear industry can easily cover an accident.

Just to be clear, Congress decides who makes up the shortfall if the damages exceed $10B. They could decide to make the nuclear industry pay more than the $10B liability, not the taxpayers (stated in your Wikipedia link).

The conclusions from the 1992 EIA document you cite are based on a 1983 NRC study that the NRC has now said is outdated (disclaimer found here). The NRC is currently updating that study with better data, greater experience and sophisticated computer models.

The reason the nuclear industry continues to renew the PAA is because we're about to build a lot of new nuclear plants. Like you said above, the PAA was created to entice companies to build plants.

Last thing. Doesn't a subsidy mean that the taxpayers actually pay something? So how is it a subsidy when the taxpayer hasn't paid one penny due to a nuclear plant accident?

There are all sorts of opinions on whether a nuclear event in the US could ever pose a hazard to a significant number of people. However, grossly distorting the facts doesn't help the discussion.

"No nuclear power coimpany [sic] or government agency has offered to provide the bare minimum safety precaution to citizens within a possible contamination zone, namely simple, cheap iodine pills.  Which must be taken within minutes of a disaster."

KI needs to be taken before exposure, not "within minutes of a disaster." By any credible scenario, this is a matter of days.

However, where do you get the information that KI is not being made available? Here is the NRC position:
http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/emerg-preparedness/protect-p ...

Here is an announcement of the Vermont Department of Health KI distribution:

http://healthvermont.gov/enviro/rad/KI_program.aspx

Here is the New Hampshire Department of Safety Announcement:

http://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/bem/nuclearpowerplants ...

Here is an announcement about the Pennsylvania Health Department distribution:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/48507.php

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Well, the PAA might not be worth that much, however it's certainly not worthless either.

At the very least, what it's doing is making it so that Nuclear power companies can purchase Limited Liability Insurance, instead of Full Liability Insurance.  Which has a significant difference in the rate price.
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/paa/priceandersonsubsidy ...
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/paa/gao2004nrclimitedlia ...
____

But as for Subsidies, you don't really need the Price Anderson Act to say Nuclear gets too much Federal support.
_

Nuclear power gets:

1. PTC secured for 8 years
http://www.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-73782 ...

2. Federal Loan Program 3x larger than the entire rest of the electric power industry combined
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclearloans.png

3. A 2 billion dollar cost overrun fund for the first six plants.
http://www.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-73782 ...

4. More than half of the DOE's energy related R&D fund (for the past decade, and the past half century)
And it's still begging for more.
http://greyfalcon.net/energyresearch.png
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear ...
http://www.inl.gov/featurestories/2008-02-05.shtml

5. Hasn't payed a thin dime to deal with high level waste since 1998 due to lawsuits that Yucca Mountain isn't open yet. Even though new cost estimates have found Yucca mountain costs over 3x what they previously thought.
http://nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/17nuke.html
http://www.grist.org/news/2008/08/05/yucca/index.html

6. Profits budgeted for the plant decommissioning have Zero income tax.
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear ...

And I'm pretty sure some Federal Power Purchase Agreements, favorable transmission, and debt recovery/waiving in there too.
http://greyfalcon.net/parenti
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/quickeconfact208.pdf

_____

If people are so convinced of Nuclear's competitiveness.
Either take away those subsidies/support-structures.
Or give Solar/Wind/Geo, each, a comparable level of Federal support.

_

Since as is, the Renewable PTC program accounts for 87% of the non-RD financing from the fed.  
And it was blocked 2000, 2002, 2004, the first three months of 2008, and blocked 8 times so far for 2009.  
And can't get any more than a 1-2 year extension.
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/01/28/rene ...
http://gao.gov/new.items/d08102.pdf
http://greyfalcon.net/subs.png

If Industrial Scale Renewables with that pathetic level of Federal support, can still go toe-to-toe with Nuclear, and even undercut it, that certainly tells you something about the economic competativeness of Nuclear power.

No small wonder that almost every other nation in the world runs their Nuclear power program as a fullblown Federal Monopoly, eh?

-David Ahlport

Imagine that the terrorist attack on 9-11 never took place. Instead, suppose that on a busy weekday morning at about 11 AM, a design defect in the floor attach fittings of a World Trade Center building caused a mid level floor to collapse on to the floor below it.

That started a chain reaction collapse that brought the building down. The upper floors tipped into the other WTC tower, triggering the same defect and bringing it down.

There is no evacuation because there is no warning, and 40,000 people die in 30 seconds.

A Boeing 747 takes off with a full load of fuel on a long international flight. One minute after takeoff it flies through the wake of another jumbo jet. The turbulence causes an undetected crack in the vertical fin to propagate, and the fin snaps off. The 747 yaws sideways, rolls onto its back and dives down through the roof of a large sports arena holding the national championship basketball game.

200,000 pounds of fuel atomizes on impact with the floor and erupt in an enormous fireball inside the building, consuming all the oxygen and incinerating 40,000 people on live HD worldwide television.

In 1997 the EPA determined that a human life was worth $5.8 million.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/funding.nsf/ef8d219bc45f08 ...

Corrected for inflation, that is $7.6 million now.

The loss in each case would be $304 billion for human life, plus the property loss.

The WTC did not carry this level of insurance. Should they have been prevented from constructing those buildings without adequate insurance?

The airlines do not carry this level of insurance, should the airlines be grounded for lack of adequate insurance coverage?

Suppose that a biogenetics scientist in a major pharmaceutical industry accidentally develops a virus that is more contagious than the common cold and more deadly than the HIV virus. He contaminates himself and his family, the virus spreads around the world and kills half the population. That would be a twenty five thousand trillion dollar loss. All the money in the world would not cover that loss.

Should we shut down the entire drug industry and go back to life without medicine because it is not insured for all possible accidents?

Dam failures have killed 8000 people in the U.S.

http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/damfailure/pdf/fema-94-i ...

In 1975 a single dam failure in China killed about 30,000.

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

Dams in the U.S. are not insured for the maximum imaginable loss. Should we tear down all dams and give up our hydroelectric power, or charge much more per kWh to pay for insurance?

Coal plants are killing over 20,000 Americans each year. That is a $175 billion loss each year that the coal plants are not paying for, a virtual subsidy.

You are holding a wedding reception for 150 people in your home. An F5 tornado sucks your home and its contents up to 1,000 feet, grinds it into small pieces, and deposits the mess in a field 2 miles away, killing everybody.

The tornado loss is $1.14 billion plus the property loss. Are you carrying that much liability insurance on your house? If not, should you be denied the privilege of owning a home?

If we required every corporation and individual to obtain insurance coverage for the worst possible event no matter how unlikely, we would have no civilization at all.

The Price Anderson Act requires that the utilities provide $10 billion in insurance coverage without cost to the public or government and without fault needing to be proven.

http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf67.html

It covers power reactors, research reactors, and all other nuclear facilities.

It was renewed for 20 years in mid 2005, with strong bipartisan support, and requires individual operators to be responsible for two layers of insurance cover. The first layer is where each nuclear site is required to purchase US $300 million liability cover which is provided by two private insurance pools.

The second layer is jointly provided by all US reactor operators. It is funded through retrospective payments if required of up to $96 million per reactor per accident collected in annual installments of $15 million (and adjusted with inflation). Combined, the total provision comes to over $10 billion paid for by the utilities. (The Department of Energy also provides $10 billion for its nuclear activities.) Beyond this cover and irrespective of fault, Congress, as insurer of last resort, must decide how compensation is provided in the event of a major accident.

More than $200 million has been paid by US insurance pools 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.

American Nuclear Insurers  is a pool comprised of investor-owned stock insurance companies. About half the pool's total liability capacity comes from foreign sources such as Lloyd's of London. The average annual premium for a single-unit reactor site is $400,000.

Two teenage brothers are home alone. They break into the liquor closet and find a half gallon of tequila. The older boy challenges the younger brother, "Bet you can't drink the whole bottle". "Yes I can" says the younger boy, and proceeds to start chugging. He passes out without finishing it, losing the bet, and within the hour looses his life.

This establishes that 64 oz. of tequila is a lethal dose. The Linear No Threshold (LNT) model says that if 64 people each drink one ounce of tequila one of them will be dead within the hour.

This is how we calculate the risk of low level radiation.

60 years of studying the effects of radiation has still not proven low level radiation to be harmful or beneficial. We can say with absolute certainty that the health effects of low level radiation are very small compared to other risks we accept without much thought.

Google   "radiation hormesis"   for an interesting debate, or try this.

http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/full/179/5/1137

The Chernobyl accident exposed millions of people to a small dose of radiation. The estimates of the number of deaths from Chernobyl over the next 40 years range from 4,000 (IAEA), to 100,000 (Greenpeace), based on the LNT theory.

If radiation hormesis turns out to be valid the Chernobyl accident may prevent thousands of cancer deaths.

The Chernobyl reactor had design defects that, combined with gross operator error, allowed it to go rapidly to 100 times the design power level, creating a powerful steam explosion that tore the roof off the building and dispersed fuel. It could never have been licensed in  the US.

If it had an appropriately designed containment building for that reactor design, the release would have been minor.

Modern reactors have improved instrumentation and control systems, passive safety systems and strong containments designed to contain a full meltdown.

http://www.areva-np.com/common/liblocal/docs/Brochure/BRO ...

http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2006-1-3.pdf

Nobody is going to build another Titanic, or a De Havilland Comet, or a Chernobyl reactor.

I cannot think of any industry that handles insurance coverage as well as nuclear power.

I support the repeal of Price-Anderson and treating nuclear power like other industries.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Google   "radiation hormesis"   for an interesting debate, or try this.
http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/full/179/5/1137

"Radiation may actually be good for you; So no need to worry!"

Oh come on.

-David Ahlport

First nuclear, now clean coal

July, 2007, in the Land of Obama:

In essence, the state would take out an insurance policy to cover the cost of any lawsuit resulting from ccs.

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=170 ...

passed both houses unanimously.  

And you talk about McCain like he'd be an environmental disaster.

getting control of a plane is not as easy as before 9-11, the response of passengers and crew is different

The nuclear containment dome is a smaller and tougher target.

Radiation leak will not happen based on tests.

Mitigation for Indian Point and plants by cities like New York just to put this to rest.

ten-fifteen story batting cage like fencing for less than ten million to ensure that any plane explodes and fragments before hitting the containment dome.

New anti-radiation drugs 5000 times more effective than current pills being tested now on humans by James Tour Rice university.

Other changes that can be made in terms of protection of radiation and war.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/progress-in-radiation-pr ...

Re-inventing civil defense which also protects against earthquake damage and hurricanes so overall insured and uninsured damage is reduced, thus offsetting costs.

simple things like better nails and building materials