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Who Will Pay for America's Chernobyl Roulette?
As the US attempts to dig out from economic collapse, a little-known nuclear industry liability could seriously derail Obama's attempt to revive our finances.
It is the federal disaster insurance on 104 rickety atomic reactors. Because the industry cannot get its own insurance, we taxpayers are on the hook.
There is no "rainy day" fund to finance the clean-up after a reactor disaster. No one in government or industry can reasonably explain how we would pay for such a catastrophe.
Chernobyl's lethal cloud began pouring into the atmosphere 23 years ago this week. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin, and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, estimates the death toll at 300,000.
It also gutted the regional economy, and accelerated the Soviet collapse. By conservative accounts Chernobyl's explosion has so far cost a half-trillion dollars, with its financial toll continuing to accrue.
A disaster at a US reactor could dwarf that number.
Chernobyl exploded in a remote rural region in an impoverished country. Eighty kilometers away, Kiev was heavily dusted with radiation.
Most American reactors are in what were once considered remote regions. But Indian Point is about half as far from Manhattan as is Chernobyl from Kiev. Likewise San Onofre from Los Angeles, Turkey Point from Miami, Byron from Chicago, Grand Gulf from Baton Rouge, Seabrook and Pilgrim from Boston, Limerick and Peach Bottom from Philadelphia, Calvert Cliffs from Baltimore, Perry from Cleveland, Prairie Island and Monticello from Minneapolis.
All these reactors were designed and built decades ago. Not one has private insurance beyond a tiny percentage of the potential damage.
When the nuke power industry first got going, utility executives refused to invest, citing the insupportable costs of a potential disaster.
Back then, the Sandia Laboratory's WASH-740 Report warned that a melt-down at an American reactor could permanently irradiate a land mass the size of Pennsylvania. The fiscal costs, like the potential death toll, were essentially inestimable.
So reactor backers got Congress to pass the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, which protected utilities from all but a tiny portion of the potential damage. The industry assured the public that "within a few years" atomic technology would have advanced so far that private insurers would clamor for the business.
That was 52 years ago. No private insurer has stepped up to cover that first generation of reactors (check your home-owners policy for the standard exclusion clause). Neither will they do so for future reactors. The entire "new generation" of atomic plants now being so mightily hyped is also to be insured by the federal government, ie you and me.
The potential financial impact is beyond comprehension. The cost of abandoning several thousand square miles of the Hudson Valley down to Manhattan, or the Atlantic shore north of and into Boston, or the coastal regions along and into Los Angeles and the California central Valley, simply cannot be calculated. Mere trillions---2? 5? 20?---become meaningless. The collapse of the currency, the utter chaos of the economic system, the burial of health care, the devastating impact on millions of lives...all defy description.
All will be the responsibility of the federal government. By limiting responsibility of the reactor owners it has forced us to assume liability for the claims of those who survive long enough to sue.
There is no contingency plan for this in the federal budget. No secret reserve. No magic monetary bullet. Should one of these plants melt or explode, American economic life as we have known it could be essentially over.
Thus the re-licensing of rickety old reactors like New Jersey's Oyster Creek, Vermont Yankee and dozens more now exceeding their 40-year design span is a horrifying game of Chernobyl Roulette. Likewise the building of new ones, which also can't get private insurance.
The owners assure us the odds on an accident are "acceptable." But they are not the ones liable. They are betting our everything against their pittance.
Against which the hundreds of billions in Obama's stimulus plan seem a pitiful penny. Our current fiscal mess pales in comparison to what could come from the irresponsible gamble on these perilous machines.
There are 104 of these radioactive roulette wheels in the US alone. Within weeks Congress may vote to spend OUR money to build still more (see www.nirs.org, www.beyondnuclear.org, www.nukefree.org).
Our money and our lives are being wagered in a game where the house---OUR house---simply cannot win.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllIt's over. One way or another...it's over.
The GOP has started a new campaign of promoting nuclear power just "...like France." They'll talk about how France gets 80% of it's electricity from nuclear power forgetting that the US has five times the population. More people get power from our existing nuclear plants in the United States than do all the people of France (France has a population about equal to that of California and Texas). The GOP will also push this since the largest player to build plants will be the French Government owned Areva. The same company that courted the Bush administration and was in on those secret energy meetings with Cheney and eventually won $13 billion in subsidies (Energy Policy Act 2005), AND Areva then appointed the Bush energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, to it's board.
Fuck the GOP. And I don't mean let them bend over and "oh here's a nice dab of KY Jelly." No. I mean, get out the electric drill, place an old rusty wire brush in the chuck, dip the brush in some salt water, then run the drill and plunge the brush in some caustic soda, THEN let the GOP bend over. Was that graphic enough?
Wasserman shouldn't be so worried about insurance for a nuclear disaster in the U.s., after all, Cuba would be likely to offer to help with the medical needs of the victims who live through it, and they have twenty three year of experience in dealing with radiation sickness. Not that they've ever had a nuclear disaster of their own, but they are, and have been, treating the victims of Chernobyl since that accident first occurred. Ukraine used to send 2000 or more victims a year to Cuba, but lately it's down to about 700 a year. Cuba even set aside one of their balnearios specifically for those nuclear victims. I think it says much that the tiny island of Cuba has a better medical system than either the U.s or all of the countries that were the U.S.S.R. and that, I think, is the definitive argument that proves that the Cuban's humanist system is far better for the world than any of the capitalist systems, all of which are deficient when it actually comes to looking after the people.
" I think it says much that the tiny island of Cuba has a better medical system than either the U.s or all of the countries that were the U.S.S.R"
"definitive argument that proves that the Cuban's humanist system is far better for the world than any of the capitalist systems, all of which are deficient when it actually comes to looking after the people"
I guess PT Barnum was right.
Mammon is fire and brimstone.
"By conservative accounts Chernobyl's explosion has so far cost a half-trillion dollars, with its financial toll continuing to accrue."
I wish liberals would stop using the word "conservative" as if it was a good thing.
Solar power and LED lamps.
How does Liberal France handle this?? They lead the world in nuclear power generation. Maybe they have the solution?
By more ocean dumping of their nuke waste, this time off the coasts of Somalia? Thousands died in a heat wave and they had to shut down their hot reactors.
Their governing class is just stupid. They always make the wrong decisions. Maybe someone should ask the French where all of their leftover contaminants are and then judge how forward thinking they are (not!).
a long time ago liberal used to be synonim with progressive, which means quote: "Promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods". Nuclear power generation is a step ahead from burning fossil fuels, therefore progressive.
I was actually pretty surprised to read on Wiki that in France nuclear power is promoted by the socialist and communist parties. Nuclear power comes cheaper than fossil fuel power so parties that tend to lean toward populism favor it.
Chernobyl was not a nuclear explosion. It was just a very hot, stubborn fire in nuclear fuel. Chernobyl and a huge surrounding area is uninhabitable for an estimated three to six hundred years. The fallout from Chernobyl contaminated food and livestock around Europe and Scandinavia for a long time, and the radiation is still traceable in the earth and some living things.
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Chernobyl + 20
Chernobyl, a disaster almost old enough to vote.
It seems a lifetime ago to the young;
Just yesterday to those of us who remember
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Operation Crossroads at Bikini.
Chernobyl was a prediction by those who knew;
By those who had seen their bones through their arms,
Bathed in Thermonuclear light in the Marshall Islands.
And by the Victims of Castle Bravo in ‘54.
Chernobyl was preceded by many close calls, many accidents.
The Fermi plant near Chicago, Three Mile Island and others,
Radiation poisoning suffered by countless “Downwinders.”
Here and abroad they cried their warnings.
Chernobyl was not a nuclear explosion, not a bomb,
It was just an accident, a stubborn fire in nuclear fuel.
Yet the effects were felt, are still felt, around the world.
They will continue for many generations.
Chernobyl, a city, a region, rendered uninhabitable
For three to six centuries, longer than the Dark Ages lasted.
A legacy of cancers and mutations, not two heads or three legs,
But susceptibilities for diseases and mental retardation.
Chernobyl, subject of an article being written twenty years ago.
My young son came in with the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Wow, Dad! Weather report! For the first time in history,
Scattered showers with traces of radioactive Iodine!”
Chernobyl, a warning unheeded by those who
Never felt the heat, saw the light, feared the sickness,
But blithely want to curse the planet with more of the same.
In the sacred name of Democracy?
Chernobyl is our future, unless we reinstate the many treaties,
The world worked so hard to create, building hope out of fear.
And remove from power, those who would reawaken the nuclear dragon,
And turn it loose to devour the earth again.
Steve Osborn
26 April 2006
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And so it seems to go, endlessly, as long as somebody makes a profit...
As they say,... it's simply a matter of "when", not "if" there will be an accident. THEN it will be the end of nuclear power(and unfortunately, many of us}. I don't expect that AIG, FEMA, EPA, or any of those 3 or 4 letter agencies will come to the rescue. Will try to stay upwind I suppose.
Who will pay? Those left alive after the day. And that could be at anytime, but it absolutely shows the concern(or severe lack of) our electorate and corporate criminals hold on what so many consider the most precious resource, the children. The don't give a hoot about them; just more fodder for their evil criminal ways.
Bill,
Thank you for writing and saving me the time to do so. All of your statements are factual, whereas the author of this piece.....well, let's just say he needs to read facts a bit more.
All very well, but all the insurance in the world is not going to help you if you are dead. And if you are anywhere near the meltdown when it happens or any time within the next 600 years, you might prefer to be.
It appears that the Price-Anderson Act establishes an insurance fund and limits liability to $18.6 bil, min $10 bil, but probably more like $12 bil, with the public funding the unlimited difference. It's an unnecessary risk.
According to Michael Boyd, 2004, at citizen.org, Chernobyl cost $358 bil, excluding costs outside the region, claimed to raise the total much higher. A 1982 federally-funded Sandia National Laboratory study estimated that damages from a severe nuclear accident could run more than $560 bil (adjusted, in 2000 dollars).
"No one in government or industry can reasonably explain how we would pay for such a catastrophe"
Catastrophes are a growth industry in the "good ol USA". If you hadn't noticed, it is the public debt that funds all elite-directed danger/destruction. The profits will be reaped by the private contractors.
Do not worry about the danger, the waste, the damage. Friedmanite capitalism will turn the public debt into a solution to all problems, and the more problems, the more solutions, the more opportunities and the more prosperity.
What fuss?
Yeah its good for GDP growth.
The magic of the Capitalist system. I read of a mine up in Colorado. It was a gold mine that used arsenic and the like to extract the ore.
In sum total 100 million dollars of gold was taken out of the mines. The mining compnay long since gone. They obvioulsy made a profit else they would not have mined the ore.
The enviormental destruction is in the billions of dollars and the Obama administration announced the cleanup of the same (at Taxpayers expense) as a stimulus to the economy that will provide much needed jobs.
One really has to give the head a shake at the logic of this.
So your poinyt well taken. Capitalism as it is structured suggests that an explosion at a Nuclear plant will be GOOD for the economy.
Its nuts.
There is a nuclear power plant 20 miles SouthWest of Raleigh, NC. The Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area has a population of over 1 million.
Will the pro-nuclear people out there please tell me how much it will cost us to store the most hazardous thing we know for the next one billion years? Please give me that in 2009 dollars and you may round off to the nearest Trillion.
Radioactivity from Chernobyl was detected in Scotland. The fallout from the Mount St. Helens eruption traveled east to the Soviet Union.
Nuclear waste has been dumped off Somalia. Would you like to buy some fish from Somalia?
Solar. Wind. Wave. Instead of Republican $30,000 tax breaks for Hummers.
Bill,
The type of reactor you are talking about is a concept. There aren't actually any such reators. Unless every single current nuclear power plant is closed, Wasserman's argument still holds. And what has prevented your type of reactor from being built? Clinton? No. W.Bush? No. Costs relative to coal, wind, and solar? Yes.
Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.46 billion years. National Library of Medicine website says:
"...Uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication facilities also release small amounts of uranium to the atmosphere. Contamination of surface water and groundwater by effluents from uranium mining, milling, and production operations has been documented. Contamination of groundwater and surface water can also occur by water erosion of tailings piles. Uranium may also be released from radioactive waste disposal sites. Uranium radionuclide concentrations in ground waters from the Hanford Site (Richland, WA) indicate that uranium is highly sorbed."
Bill,
I've always appreciated your comments Billy, I've learned a lot from your posts.
I agree with you that coal dust is deadly; and I understand it rains mercury "fallout" downwind of the stacks. But what are the fatal consequences of a serious coal plant accident? And how long do those consequences last? Days? A month?
Then what do you think the consequences could be if a nuclear reactor is hit by a late model Jumbo airliner? Reactor containment vessels of the 1970's were specified to resist, not prevent the penatration of a much smaller B-707, which carried much less fuel on board than the B-747 or the A380 (by less than half.)
Do you think the consequences of the latter could be equal to a small Chernobyl? And say the reactor material climbed into the stratosphere and crossed several states, how many hundreds of years do the survivors have to deal with it? Most are not breeder reactors right? So it's not plutonium one would have to worry about being dispersed? So would there be just Uranium 238 dispersed as an example of the worst element in terms of volume and half-life?
Murphy's law would maintain that "if it can happen, it will."
When I consider the willful dispersal of samonilla peanuts into the food supply by a food company CEO recently, I must realize that he graduated from the same business schools as the CEO of Power companies. But with dirty peanuts the damage lasts for one generation. With nuclear mistakes or misdeeds, the damage can extend decades or centuries.
All things considered, I have reached the conclusion that Coal dust (killing off this decade's life) is more acceptable a risk then 500 years of mutations and health care costs if a nuclear event hits one out of 100 plants in the U.S.
Is my thinking non-factual or in error?
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Bill,
Sorry. I was confusing what you were saying with the Clean And Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor (CAESAR)---which is a concept. But, you say the US does not have any fast reactors----and my limited reading says "they have the potential to produce less waste". Not waste free. And they are not being built becauswe they are so expensive. And no state wants a Yucca Mountain. And a Yucca Mountain is not safe for 4.46 billion years.
Keep in mind the Bush administration's excuses for 9/11 and Katrina were "Well, noone could have predicted such catastrophes!" False, of course, they were predicted.
We must get off coal or we will have a 50-ft rise in sea levels---which will be truly catastrophic. Germany gets over 30% of their power from renewables TODAY.
Interesting "cold fusion" story from last week's 60 Minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml
Nanoo
I always look forward to your comments. I assume you have more balance in issues because you are a native. My old man worked for the power co. and helped build the nuclear plant in MN. Safety was not an issue as he told me they just put toxic shit in empty box cars and dumped them along side rails of track. In MN the river cools the reactor which has altered the fish because of warmer affected water.
Electricity is something else alright. Just talking about this last night. I'm not for organized religion however their are passages about the prince of the power of the air, as well as powers below the earth. Right now these issues are personal as a nanoteck place is being built to my north. The local power coop. wants to build a substation on part of the farm property that my husband lives on that we jointly own. I plant organic there and want animals in the future. I feel like like I have a real challenge ahead of me as the hook has already been set by the chunk of money my husband has already mentally spent. I guess I'm concerned about environmental impact.
Yes, WideofVision, that was graphic enough and i loved it. You are right on this one.
thanks