Ontario's power glut means possible nuclear plant shutdowns

[PamW]

62. At least nuclear power has the Brookhaven study...

What companies are required to carry enough insurance for the worst event that you can imagine? None. Society always picks up the risk above some level.

You can't base a calculation on the insane assumption that the company you don't like should be required to carry some amount that you imagine is appropriate.
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At least with nuclear power, the amount of required insurance was based on a "worst case" study by scientists at Brookhaven.

In the mid '50s when Congress was writing the laws for licensing nuclear power plants, they asked the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) how bad a nuclear power plant accident could be. The AEC tasked the scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory with calculating a "worst case" nuclear power plant accident. In the Brookhaven study, the scientists assumed that the power plant did NOT have a containment building even though ALL commercial power plants would be required to have a containment building. Additionally, Brookhaven assumed that everything that could go wrong, did; and that anything that could go right, didn't.

The level of liability insurance that nuclear power plant operators are required to obtain from commercial insurers, like American Nuclear Insurers, was established by the Brookhaven study.

The problem was that there were those in Congress that saw the insurance issue as a way of killing off the nascent nuclear power industry at the outset. All they had to do was require an exhorbitant amount of insurance, totally unrelated to the actual potential damages - a lot like requiring a car driver to carry 100s of Billions of dollars of liability insurance; then the cost of insurance would be prohibitive, and the nascent nuclear power industry would be killed.

All the while, these anti-nukes at least CLAIMED that they weren't trying to kill the industry, that they were trying to protect the public. So the authors of the legislation, Representative Charles Price (D-IL) and Clinton Anderson (D-NM) concocted the 2nd tier of Price-Anderson. The 2nd tier provides the protection that the anti-nukes wanted, but the industry didn't have to pay for it up front. They would only have to pay for it if there was an accident by taxing ALL the nuclear power plant operators and not just the one that had the accident, in order to reimburse the Government for any expenditures providing 2nd tier.

That scheme gave the required protection the anti-nukes claim was needed for the average person, but didn't kill the industry with premiums for liability insurance that exceeded what the scientists said would be the worst case. The anti-nukes couldn't publically admit that their true motive was not concern for public safety, but to kill the industry before it got started. That's why we have this two-tiered liability scheme embodied in the Price-Anderson Act.

There are liability limits encoded in law not only for nuclear power plant, but airline travel ( read the back of your paper ticket sometime ), hydroelectric dams.... I don't see people groussing about giving "subsidies" to airlinies.

PamW