Antinuclear

Nuclear industry would not exist without tax-payer liability

The Other Nuclear Power Subsidy – A Liability Cap ThePopTort 20 Feb 2010 : “……loan guarantees aren’t the only potential subsidy from which this industry benefits. Since the 1950s, when it passed the Price Anderson Act, Congress put a cap on the liability of the nuclear industry in the event of a major accident.

So if there’s anything like, say, the Chernobyl disaster (the 1986 accident in the Ukraine where the containment structure couldn’t hold an explosion causing lethal radiation to spill out killing thousands, harming hundreds of thousands and rendering hundreds of square miles uninhabitable), the industry won’t be responsible beyond a relatively small amount. Taxpayers will. In other words, if the nuclear power industry were fully responsible for the health and safety risks of these plants, the industry wouldn’t exist………..

The type of plant proposed for Georgia, built by Westinghouse, has run into trouble with its “Safety Shield Building”, which is supposed to protect the reactor from tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes and airplane crashes, as well as keep large amounts of radiation contained in the event of an accident. In an effort apparently to save money, this building design “features modual construction – bringing prefab components to the site, rather than construction of the Safety Shield Building on-site from the ground-up.”   On October 15, 2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to the company, saying this design raises major safety concerns…….never to be resolved are a few other problems, like the fact that reactors are operated by human beings who can make mistakes. They are still dependent on a highly complex technology, which is vulnerable to failure for any number of reasons. And they all contain lethal radioactive fuel, which can melt.

ThePopTort: The Other Nuclear Power Subsidy – A Liability Cap

February 20, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1 | antinuclear, nuclear costs