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Nuclear industry survived only because of ‘liability cap’

After 60 years of nuclear power, the industry survives only on stupendous subsidies, Ecologist, Pete Dolack 4th January 2016 Without ‘liability caps’ the industry would have been dead long ago

The British government, for instance, currently foots more than three-quarters of the bill for radioactive waste management and decommissioning, and for nuclear legacy sites. A report prepared for Parliament estimates that total public liability to date just for this program is around £50 billion, with tens of billions more to come.

Liability caps for accidents are also routine. In the US the Price-Anderson Act, in force since 1957, caps the total liability of nuclear operators in the event of a serious accident or attack to $10.5 billion. If the total is higher, as it surely would be, taxpayers would be on the hook for the rest.

As a further sweetener, the Bush II / Cheney administration, in 2005, signed into law new nuclear subsidies and tax breaks worth $13 billion. The Obama administration, attempting its own nuclear push, has offered an additional $36 billion in federal loan guarantees to underwrite new reactor construction, again putting the risk on taxpayers, not investors.

The Vermont Law School paper aptly sums up this picture with this conclusion: [page 69]

“If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a nuclear accident and meet the alternatives in competition that is unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build a reactor today, and anyone who owned one would exit the nuclear business as quickly as they could.”

If we had a rational economic system, they surely would.http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986749/after_60_years_of_nuclear_power_the_industry_survives_only_on_stupendous_subsidies.html

January 22, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, Reference, USA