In principle, everybody in Western Civilization, bar God and the nuclear industry, is liable for the damage he has caused; whether he is able to pay for it
¾by having enough coverage in his insurance policy or by other means¾is an entirely different matter. One is a moral and legal obligation, the other the ability to fulfill it. If by negligent driving you kill the father of seven children, you are liable for their upkeep and education; if you are not fully covered for such an accident by your insurance, you will be driven bankrupt, but that still does not relieve you of your obligation, it only destroys (perhaps temporarily) your ability to fulfil it. But if you kill that father with a nuclear reactor, then the law, the only one of its kind, says you need pay only up to what the House of Turkeys has decreed as a liability limit; beyond that you can send the orphans a raspberry.That is the theory; but even more perverse is its inversion in prac-tice. The coverage and corresponding premia are grossly inflated, as evident from the low (or nonexistent) coverage for far more dangerous power sources. They fan the antinuclear hysteria ("Would they be so high if the reactors were safe?") though they are supposed to reassure people. But the liability limit fans it even more, for it implies that nuclear power is unsafe and uninsurable by normal procedure, and it smears the nuclear industry with im-morality as well. In the coverage/liability confusion, the premia go up with the liability limit, and the nuclear industry spokesmen and lobbies are perfectly willing to accept this utterly fallacious coupling in their hagglings with the politicians. There is no nuclear liability limit, for example, in West Germany, but the utilities' premia are not infinite (as they would have to be by that logic). As a matter of fact, German premia did not increase when the liability limit was abolished (i.e., raised to infinity) in 1983.
Alas, the US industry is not man enough to say "We need no liability limit, and we ask no different treatment from anybody else. As for coverage, we are so sure of the safety of our reactors that we arc quite willing to continue with the present inequitable rates of insuring the public with a high multiple of coverage for a small frac-tion of the risk when compared to any other power source." That would have knocked the wind not only out of Markey's scrawny body, but also out of his demagogic sails. And it could have saved the utilities a cool $6 billion.
But the industry's lobbies prefer bargaining, compromising and politicking to taking a stand with nothing but the simple truth.
Why? In part, because many of the industry's executives do not understand, and hence do not fully believe in, their own product. I cannot imagine that many engineers or health physicists would ask for a liability limit
¾and they are the ones who take the front-line risk right next to the reactor. But the executive in his downtown office is another matter. He got into his armchair by infighting, not good engineering, and if he bothers about Price-Anderson at all, he hires a consultant to tell him about it. And how did the consultant get his job? By out-consulting the other consultants and gently flat-tering the executive to sleep.Had I been able to vote, I would have held my nose to evade the stench of my company, but I would have voted with Dellums, Schroeder, Weiss and Solarz for no liability limit. And breathing freely again, I would have voted for no change in coverage.
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Vol. 15, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 15, No. 2 Date: November 30, 2004 02:13 PM Title: Why the nuclear industry keeps losing
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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