Ontario's power glut means possible nuclear plant shutdowns

[kristopher]

65. Glad you brought that up

USC 2010 subsidies report by Doug Koplow
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf

6.1.2. Mandated Liability Coverage Is Small Relative to Potential Damages
Price-Anderson mandates two tiers of coverage for nuclear reactors. The first is a conventional liability insurance policy that provides $375 million in primary coverage per reactor. As of 2008 (with somewhat lower coverage levels than now in effect), the average annual premium for a single-unit reactor site was $400,000; the premiums for a second or third reactor at the same site are discount- ed to reflect a sharing of limits (NRC 2008a). While coverage has increased incrementally over time, these increases are small: on an inflation-adjusted basis, coverage is less than 10 percent higher than the $60 million in primary insurance required under the original act 50 years ago. The lack of useful actuarial data may have justified lower-than-appro- priate limits in the 1950s. However, improved data since that time, as well as the greater sophistication of insurance underwriting, should result in primary insurance policies that are substantially larger than today’s Price-Anderson requirements.

A second tier of coverage under Price-Anderson involves retrospective premiums paid into a common pool by every reactor if any reactor in the country experiences an accident with damages exceeding the primary insurance cap. The retrospective premiums have a gross value of $111.9 million available for damages, with an optional 5 percent surcharge available for legal costs only (bringing the combined total to $117.5 million) (ANI 2010, Holt 2010). Retrospective premium payments are capped at $17.5 million per year per reactor and thus can take seven years or more to be paid in full. Some additional coverage is avail- able via the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act: if the president declares a nuclear accident an emergency or major disaster, disaster relief could flow to first responders. Stafford Act funds would also come from taxpayers, and thus would be subsidies as well.

...

A simple evaluation of coverage per person, should an accident occur at a reactor located close to a population center, helps to illustrate this point. Table 21 uses as an example a reactor at Calvert Cliffs, located near Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD. Available coverage, including pooled premiums from all other reactors (as stipu- lated under Price-Anderson), barely tops $1,100 per person in the Baltimore/Washington combined statistical area. This small amount would need to cover not only loss of property from an accident but also morbidity or mortality. The portion paid by Calvert Cliffs to cover the off-site accident risk from its own operations (Tier 1 coverage plus its share of Tier 2) would be a mere $60 per person affected. While the extent of the injuries would vary with the specifics of an accident, the weather at the time, and patterns of local settlement and construction, for a metropolitan area of this size it is clear that the coverage provided by Price-Anderson is not large.
pg 77, 80

Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies