New Nuclear Power Plant for Georgia or Anywhere Agree or Disagree

To clarify: The federal government has not bought insurance. The feds have put a (very low) liability limit on nuclear power plants so that in the event of an accident the owners are not liable for more than a small amount of damages. The taxpayers will have to pay the rest. So the plants are not actually insured. We will foot the bill when the next accident happens. We, the taxpayers, are the insurer.

Of course, the reason for this is that no insurance company is stupid enough to insure a nuclear power plant. Insurance would be so expensive that using hamsters in little wheels to run generators would be a cheaper way to power the nation than fully-insured nuclear power plants.

It's a case where Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is trying to tell us that nuclear power is stupid. If you respect the free market, you should realize that the free market says that nuclear power is too expensive. Only by corrupting government to interfere with the free market by granting immunity from liability to the power companies can nuclear power plants be built.

And it really all started because the government wanted to build lots and lots of A-bombs and H-bombs, and it was easier to get the public to swallow it if it had a veneer of civilian use. So they invented a Big Lie about how with nuclear power we'd have energy too cheap to meter! How many here are old enough to remember that? I am! They told us that electricity would be so cheap you'd pay a small amount for installation and maintenance of the power lines, and the electricity itself would be free! It was a damn lie, so they could build nuclear power plants to make the whole nuclear weapons boondoggle seem acceptable. They called it "atoms for peace."

But it's a devil's bargain that poses unacceptable risks, as the people of Japan found out so horribly. And that is producing ever more radioactive waste with no place to put it.

 

How does Japan shutting nukes impact EV development? I would assume Nissan/others were developing EV for the combined Japan+US market?

 

This is how all insurance works: the policy holders pay into a pool, and claims are made against the pool. Risk still exists, but the financial aspect of the risk is spread among all of the policy holders.

The one difference in this example is that taxpayers are not asked whether they want to join. They become policy holders without explicit consent. However, this is the very nature of a republic with a representative government. We get to control actions like this, but only indirectly through our choice of representatives.

Tom

 

There is a very big difference: When you buy insurance you pay into the pool, as you say, and you pay whether there is a claim or not. In the case of such things as health or auto insurance, claims are inevitable, small (compared to the size of the pool) and relatively predictable. As a purchaser of insurance you know how much you will pay. You are betting that you will have an illness or accident, so that if you "lose" the bet, you are out some money (your premiums) but you remain healthy and uninjured. If you "win" the bet, your costs are covered for the incident. You've protected yourself against the double-whammy of illness/accident AND financial ruin.

When you sell insurance, you receive other people's premiums, and if there is a claim, you must pay. If you are insuring against an extremely uncommon, but potentially ruinous event, such as a nuclear disaster, you are gambling that the event will not happen. If you win the bet you gain a small amount of money (the premiums you collected) but if you lose the bet you are wiped out.

Cautious people buy insurance. Gamblers sell insurance. In the case of the nuclear industry, the taxpayers are selling insurance, except that we collect no premiums. We were promised the "premium" of cheap electricity. In fact, the electricity is not cheap at all. So we are paying as much for electricity as if the plants had never been built. But we are "selling" insurance FOR FREE to the nuclear industry.

Lloyds of London is an example of gamblers selling insurance. They offer insurance against unlikely but disastrous events, such as ship sinkings. Individual members of Lloyds underwrite specific risks, using their personal fortunes as backing. If the event happens (e.g. the ship sinks) that member pays out of his own pocket. But if it does not, he collects the premium. You have to be a risk-taker to join Lloyds.

The taxpayer is on the wrong side of the insurance business in the case of nuclear power.

 

That's good to hear. The initial investment may be significant, but the payback period is almost infinite. Given the abundance of clean energy available, many more countries should be developing geothermal power. Long term, it's one of the more obvious solutions. Getting people to think long term is the problem.

 

Sure, you say that now, but when the center of the earth solidifies from heat extraction...



Tom

 

There is options in regards to nuclear we really should consider, like the SMR, breeder reactors, and fuel reprocessing, but don't do to fear and ignorance.

I voted yes because I see it as a pick your poison decision.

Solar and wind should be the priority, but they have limitations. This limits can be overcome, but with increasing power demands and aging plants, the time may not be there. Stop gaps will be needed and the most likely choices will be coal or nuclear.

It's great that a new coal plant can make use of former waste products like CO2, SO2, and NOx. How is it in regards to other pollutants? The ones for the most part are just right out the smoke stake. Mercury will linger on in the environment once there. Increased water acidity, from increased atmospheric CO2, can increase it's uptake and concentration in the food chain.

Then there is the radiation. Granted the isotopes have a far shorter half life than the unreprocessed and spent nuclear fuel, but a far greater amount of it being produced and dumped in the atmosphere. This is simply do to the far greater amount of mineral a coal plant goes through than a nuclear one. Even if mined responsibly, the shear amount of coal dug up compared to uranium and thorium means a larger environmental impact.

Natural gas is cleaner to burn but its reduced cost is coming at an unknown environmental cost. Besides, its cleaniness and transportability also make far superior to coal for heating, cooking and transportation. Coal is still used by some for home heating around here. Nearly as bad is amount of homes heated by #2 oil and even electricity in the usually not so mild winters around here.

Wind and solar is best, but they likely won't be adopted at a rate to make a new nuclear or coal plant unnecessary in the near future. I conceed a natural gas plant can be better than either. It's cleaner to operate and much easier to decommission. Gas just has other uses in which it is already a superior option, and is still a relatively finite resource.

 

The nuke insurance is more like how Credit Default Swaps work.No money backing the insurance,so the taxpayer bails out the 1% when theres a failure.

 

GA power already started billing US (the customers) $1.50 per month, (in 2011) and now $3 a month(2012) since early last year..

 

The reality of it is, the long term impacts of most every form of energy generation are not known and can not be quantified. That's why we're always arguing about it.

Anything that consumes fuel is bad, really.

But, until we can figure out how to make electricity travel well, we'll be burning gasoline in our cars.

Perhaps it's time to decentralize electricity production.

 

Really? Nothing at all? I bet if I made this post and you read it, you would point out that is a mighty draconian statement. For example, are we completely clueless about how much oil remains?

 

After fighting a few state-proposed power plants during the last recession, decentralizaion sounds good to me too. But it does not sound good to your state gov't who tend to view large power plants and their No. 1 knob to create "private" industry jobs...not really private industry, I know.

Electricity travels pretty well, BTW, minimum losses.

 

unless its clean solar, wind energy i am not for decentralize of energy.
people going to run gasifiers and local air PM will go up

 

I think she meant getting more and cheaper electric storage in cars.

 

ooo I,m up for that ;-)

 

...well I was thinking solar rooftop PV as the ultimate decentralized.
But also trash-to-steam, smaller cogen power plants etc. What I think I witnessed (20-years ago) was NJ state was nixing natural gas power plants proposed by non-utilities, because they wanted to give the utilties the base load. Also at that time NJ made it official state policy to favor coal-fired power plants to make sure the state had a good balance of fuel sources. As far as I know, that is still the policy but I hope not - but I am out of there now.