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How many $trillions is the nuclear industry going to cost?

No insurance company would — or will, or can — insure such risks. So who insures them? You do. Canada’s Nuclear Liability Act, proclaimed in 1976, caps the liability of nuclear operators at $75 million. Beyond that, the taxpayer pays.

Nuclear power is the worst option,  TheChronicleHerald.ca, By SILVER DONALD CAMERONSun, Mar 27 – “…….The first major unknown cost is insurance. Nobody knows what a catastrophic nuclear accident might cost. If the crippled Japanese reactors suffer meltdowns, how many lives will be lost, how many people will be injured, how much property will be rendered unusable? In 1996, informed observers speculated that the cost of a catastrophic accident at Darlington, Ont., could reach $1 trillion.

No insurance company would — or will, or can — insure such risks. So who insures them? You do. Canada’s Nuclear Liability Act, proclaimed in 1976, caps the liability of nuclear operators at $75 million. Beyond that, the taxpayer pays.

The second unknown cost is the garbage. Uranium mining and milling have left Canada with at least 200 million tonnes of tailings, dangerous radioactive wastes that a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency panel labelled “a perpetual environmental hazard.”

A more intense problem is the spent fuel from power reactors. It is utterly lethal and will remain so for hundreds of years. In 1982, nuclear spokesmen confidently told me that a disposal solution was imminent. It wasn’t. Spent fuel is still stored “temporarily” in swimming pools at reactor sites all over the world.

Furthermore, nuclear plants themselves eventually become irradiated toxic waste and have to be disassembled and disposed of. But nobody knows what to do with all this nuclear garbage, or what it would cost to get rid of it. The world is speckled with radioactive waste waiting for a place to go.

The industry itself is also repellent — a kind of reptilian mutation from the arms industry, with leaders who tend to be arrogant, secretive and sly. …….
If we fear and loathe nukes — as we should — and we recognize that coal is cooking the planet, our goal should be to minimize our use of both.

A remote goal? Yes. So let’s start right now.

Nuclear power is the worst option – TheNovaScotian – TheChronicleHerald.ca

March 28, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Canada