For the last few weeks, I’ve been planning a Slate-style contrarian post, arguing that the US and maybe other countries should increase the subsidies for nuclear power associated with the attempt to launch a ‘nuclear renaissance’. My argument would have been two-fold. First, the straightforward point that it’s desirable to explore all options for non-carbon based electricity, and that the existing subsidies (combined with the absence of a carbon price) were not sufficient to make this happen (a decade after Bush launched the program, there are only a handful of starters, and most of the early proposals have been abandoned).
The second was political – for a substantial group (mostly on the political right), the desirability of nuclear power is an article of faith, and their (outdated) view that environmentalists resolutely oppose it forms part of the reason for adopting anti-science views and do-nothing policy positions on climate change. More funding for attempts to develop the nuclear option might convert some of them, and embarrass some others into dropping this particular talking point.
But after the disaster in Japan, and the failure of cooling systems at nuclear plants there, it’s most unlikely that anything along these lines will happen.
We have yet to see how bad the outcome will be, but it’s already apparent that two plants have suffered partial meltdowns or something close enough that they will never operate again. As cooling systems continue to fail, more are being affected. It’s likely, based on past experience, that plants in the same complex will be offline for a long period. So, even in the best case, the economic effects will be severe. The worst case could be disastrous.
The economics of building a new nuclear plant in the developed world were marginal at best before this disaster. The political climate was much more favorable than it had been, but still fragile. In the best possible case, the response to the failures will involve new, and expensive safety equipment, and more restrictions on the location of new plants. But that will almost certainly be enough to stop any new projects, and maybe even the handful (two sites in the US, and one in Finland) currently under way in developed countries other than Japan.
In Japan itself, political support for nuclear power has been fairly solid until now, but construction of new plants was already slowing down. In the wake of the disaster, it seems likely (if only because of the need for diversification) that the replacements for the plants destroyed or taken off-line will be non-nuclear, probably either gas-fired or renewable.
That leaves China (and perhaps India) as the only real hope for large-scale construction of new nuclear plants. It remains to be seen how that will play out.
Having said all that, the risks from the nuclear plants are insignificant when compared to the catastrophic loss of life and economic destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. It’s hard to know what can be done in the face of such destructive force, other than to help the survivors as best we can.
John Quiggin 
Completely agree. What ‘renaissance’ there was terminated on the 11th March 2011. If there is a major-melt-down even the existing nuclear industry will be in doubt.
I’m actually surprised that this is the first post of seen on the subject in the climate/energy blogosphere.
I wouldn’t say the risks themselves are insignificant compared to the loss from the tsunami. So far the costs have been. At the moment though, a Chernobyl level disaster still seems easily possible, irradiating 10 000 square kilometers of a small island for thousands of years and causing tens of thousands of additional cancers. It probably won’t happen, but if it did it would dwarf the current crisis.
It has been interesting to watch pro-nuclear advocates holding their breath, and knocking on wood, and then when good news is received, saying “There you see, nothing to worry about, it was always perfectly safe.” I suppose in retrospect all chances are either 100% or 0%, the trouble is in predicting which it will be in advance.
Its a pity we can’t see some R&D into Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor’s (LFTR) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So and http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971) both China and India are building one. Although you cant make nuclear weapons with the waste which is why the idea was not pushed in the 60’s.
One question about the economics of nuclear: At what Coal price point would nuclear be worth building?
if peak oil happened in 2005 and we see rising fuel prices from now (with some extreme volatility) then the flow on effect would be that cost of mining coal and the demand would rise. well not sure about demand but liquid fuels are driving all the mining equipment and transport. However if we have a big push to electric cars then base-load power would need to be increased (night time charging) and most of that would be coal, so extra demand.
Couldn’t the best options for non-carbon based energy be explored by these steps?
1. End ALL energy subsidies.
2. Ensure energy producers insure for full risks without subsidy.
3. Legislate and enforce rigorous safety sandards on all energy production.
4. Legislate and enforce rigorous costs on all negative externalities.
Within this framework, allow the market to determine generation outcomes. (Distribution and retailing are different issues.)
This would be what I call a guided free market approach. We democratically set the necessary social and environmental parameters within which free enterprise then operates. This approach ensures that both democratic government policy and the free market are confined to their area of specialisation.
Recently, a couple of US researchers (Blackburn and Cunningham) released a report claiming that solar and nuclear had reached a cross-over point and that, over time, solar will only get cheaper while nuclear will only get more expensive. I’ve not studied the report in detail, but it looks interesting. See http://www.ncwarn.org/?p=2290.
JQ – two questions.
1. Am I still on a one comment per thread per day restriction?
2. Is this thread open for discussion of the nuclear option?
It may well be the end of the alleged nuclear renaissance but will it be the end of the spruiking of a nuclear renaissance?
The laws of physics have not been altered. Nuclear power is still the best solution to the ongoing problem of providing clean, affordable and safe power.
Yes, safe. The full results are not yet in, but they would have to be unreasonably negative (ie, far worse than the worst possible projections) to jolt the safety statistics for nuclear power into anything like the ongoing poor outcomes for other major power sources.
For someone who works in a discipline that is data based, calculates risk on the known facts, this article is a preemptive strike against nuclear power. Throwing around terms like ‘meltdown’ and ‘disaster’ (ok, you avoided using “Chernobyl”, but the implication is not far away), simply fails to acknowledge that even with an enormous earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear reactors were actually shut down so that catastrophic failure (yes, like Chernobyl) could NOT happen. But hey, why not ignore the facts, speculate about events which were successfully avoided and call up the big bad bogeyman “radiation”.
Not quite what I’ve expected from Prof Quiggin.
Direct tsunami deaths so far 1,000-10,000 nuclear site deaths 1. It’s as well to remind ourselves of some simple factoids
– crude oil production peaked 2005-2008
– China the world’s biggest coal now user faces declining coal production
– not a single coal plant has been retired anywhere due to wind and solar.
The idea was that nuclear electricity would eventually power transport as well. If you think our aluminium smelters can be run 24/7 on any other form of low carbon energy then explain how it can be done.
There is no denying the desperate state of the Japanese reactors, they had to use seawater to cool them down. Those in the business see this as a sign that they had run out of options as sea water will ruin the reactors. Already, in financial terms, it is a disaster.
RE Ikonoklast’s proposal: would it be possible to get insurance to cover the cost of the extended periods of storage required for nuclear waste?
The Japan experience is one in which multiple reactors have been affected; this is a particular scenario, I wonder out loud, that I suspect doesn’t get modelled when thinking about risks in relation to nuclear energy.
This also brings up another question: have any of the nuclear waste facitilities been breached and waste released by the earthquake or tsunami, and have any nuclear waste vessels (drums and the like) been washed out to sea? I wonder.
As if scientific considerations would stop them.
Look at Tasmania and Gunns.
According to Barry Brook at BraveNewClimate the Fukushima plant was ~40 yo and due to be decommissioned within months anyway. He also says that it was built for up to an 8.2 earthquake but (despite its age) has withstood the 50% stronger 8.9–it was the tsunami that did the major damage. The one death at nuclear power plants was a crushing accident. His site gives a detailed description of the current state of the damaged nuclear power plants and, while not to be read without a grain of salt, is worth reading.
But it is certainly true that the impression being given by the media is of great risk, perhaps to be only narrowly averted, so this will certainly set nuclear power back.
It will be facinating to see how this issue plays out. The false consiousness fostered by the media may well trump the reality that there is a low risk of death and illness from this accident. Unfortunately also, the fact that the accident occurred because of the tsunami which wreaked enormous death and destruction will emotionally link nuclear power with enormous death and destruction. We are not rational animals most of the time.
@Johncanb
Evidence, please, in support of your apparent hypothesis that you, as distinct from the public in general, are able to know what emotional links the public forms. (No consumer behaviour literature please.)
When you say “We are not rational animals most of the time”, I assume you now speak for yourself..
@Johncanb
No matter how low the risk of death and illness from nuclear accidents it is still several orders of magnitude greater than the risk from geothermal, solar thermal, tidal and wave power etc. Isn’t the real attraction of nuclear found in the political and corporate attraction to big things that both boost the managerial ego and centralise control? The attraction certainly can’t be economic because that simply doesn’t add up as JQ notes in his post.
As a keen student of media spin and propaganda I’m always on the lookout for themes and common terms used across the MSM (esp: ABC, Fairfax, Murdoch) after disasters.
The one that caught my attention across most of the reports since Friday was about how “calm” (and similar words) the Japanese people are. Then I worked out why this might be, this is from Murdoch’s WSJ:
“After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world’s admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan’s nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology.”
When the dust settles and as it seems likely, no members of the public have died due to a “nuclear” cause and the net effect on public health has been minimal, these events may well come to be seen in more level headed fashion. Especially when the stark realities of reliable low emission electricity generation come to the fore again, as they inevitably must.
The UK will be an interesting example as having one of the largest projected builds of NPPs in western countries. Just what is it going to do in the event that the NPP build is cancelled? Natural gas is really the only practical alternative but the downsides are all too obvious – emissions, energy security and uncertain future fuel costs. The UK cannot just build a grid based on wind.
If as also seems likely, the main failure in the safety systems was insufficient protection of backup diesel generators, and the 40 year old reactors themselves performed rather well in what was well in excess of a design basis accident, it is going to be difficult to argue that there is some inherent significant risk of extreme proportions. We will need to wait and see the outcome of investigations but if this is the case, rectification would seem to be neither difficult nor overly expensive.
In China we may see an increasing preference for the Westinghouse AP1000 design over the domestic CPR1000 due to it’s superior passive safely, but once again energy realities will be foremost and the nuclear build out will most likely be otherwise unaffected.
How the Japanese publicly express themselves is not how you identify cognition.
The dust may takes years, if not decades to settle. Already the Whitehouse have signalled a re examination of the situation despite affirming their intention to proceed with nuclear power. It could take 4 to 5 years to analyse the Japanese reactor.
@quokka
I think you better see this immediately http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bPi6aHmd88
Terje open slather on this one.
Ernestine Gross. I am putting forward a hypothesis not claiming a certain outcome. As I said I will be fascinated to see how this plays out, because human behaviour and attitudes are hard to predict. I think it reasonable to expect there will be an emotional link made for many people between the death and destruction from the tsunami and nuclear power. But we don’t know how strong that will be. Our attitudes are formed by an interplay of rational and emotional impulses which in turn are influenced by external social, economic and cultural forces. I don’t claim to be immune from any of those forces, but I can only say it as I see it.
Ian Milliss. The low risk means of energy generation you mention are not large scale and/or economically efficient enough yet. So although the economics of nuclear power is marginal, in some countries it stacks up reasonably well against the economics of the things you mention.
@Ian Milliss
Reports are that the containment is still intact. I don’t see any reason to retract what I wrote at this stage and sincerely hope it stays that way.
JQ – firstly thanks for opening up the discussion. I think it’s important.
I find it odd that you would advocate public spending on nuclear for political reasons. Surely this may be a side benefit but it shouldn’t enter your calculus regarding whether a public subsidy is or was a good idea. Trying to buy off oponents in this way is no doubt often the case but I’m a bit shocked that you would openly advocate it. Taxpayers deserve better from economists such as yourself. If you support or supported nuclear subsidies for reasons of national interest then fair enough but supporting it to “buy” people such as myself seems crass. In my case it wouldn’t work anyway.
Nuclear needs to pass the economic test on it’s own merits. The most that I would expect from governments would be:-
i) price CO2 emissions if appropriate. We can debate how appropriate this is, how best to do it, and what the price should be but these are details. The point is that direct subsidies are not a good idea.
ii) don’t mandate public liability insurance out of proportion to the mandates for other industries. There is clearly room for some debate about what is appropriate but the criteria should not be designed to stop nuclear but to manage the risks.
iii) do ensure that regime risk isn’t recklessly used to block the industry. Making the plants publicly owned is one means to achieving this but obviously not the one I would support. The decision to allow nuclear plants obviously requires democratic consent but once granted the operators and financiers should be entitled to proceed in confidense that permission won’t be arbitrarily pulled part way through without just compensation.
The logic in favour of you writing a pro nuclear article does not seem to have changed. What has changed is how your article may be received. Surely you don’t write to be popular. If you were going to support nuclear before the Japan earth quake, and have not substantially changed your view of nuclear I don’t think you should let public sentiment alter your course. Although I can see that it may change your timing.
Please set me straight as appropriate.
today, (coincidentally) at the Perth Town Hall cnr Hay & Barrack Sts is the launch of the
Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan.
stating
Solar and wind can supply Australia’s energy needs within 10 years.
> designed by a broad coalition of engineers,academics and industry experts.
>fully costed.
> uses proven,existing,renewable technologies.
> can be built within the next decade.
> zero carbon emmissions.
Speakers/panelists include
Mr Matthew Wright.
exec director,Beyond Zero Emissions.
Mr Steve Gates.
Chair, Sustainable Energy Now.
Sen Scott Ludlum.
Greens Senator for WA.
Hon Alannah McTiernan.
former WA Planning and Infrastructure Minister.
Mr Andre Garnaut.
Principal Sustainability Consultant, Worley Parsons.
Monday 14 March 2011.
5:45 PM for a 6:00 PM start.
@Ian Milliss
Yes but you are not comparing like with like. Assuming cost were no object, to produce enough solar thermal power to produce output comparable to that of any industrial scale nuclear plant at similar availability would entail covering an area orders of magnitude larger than the nuclear plant. You would necessarily be site limited since only very heavily insolated land would be apt. The cost for the requisite storage would also add hugely to the bill and the environmental footprint would be huge. Would you really want to be installing enough molten salt to deliver 2 weeks of capacity. Would you really be wanting to guarantee the inegrity of such a structure for 20 years or more? What would the decommissioning costs be? How would you go about supplying the water?
In practice, such schemes simply aren’t feasible at commercial scale. They can’t do the job nuclear does. If they could, we would already have seen commercial scale plants displacing fossil hydrocarbon plants. Despite very heavy subsidies and tax relief, they haven’t.
Geothermal — and in particular the HDR technology we are looking at here (and which is being examined in the Rift Valley in Africa) sound a lot more promising, but here the problem is ubiquity. You don’t get to run geothermal where it is most convenient. You take it where it is. Moreover, because every project is neccessarily a FOAK — site constrained — you will always pay top dollar for it. It’s likely that when one includes transmission costs to the load centre, geothermal will work out to be a lot more expensive than commercial nuclear power and in any event not be available everywhere. So even if it can be made to work at acceptable cost on industrial scale, it is only going to be useful where ready supplies of water and suitable geology exist. So the comparison is not telling.
Similar objections may be made against tidal power and of course in this case, the environmental cost is borne by estuaries and parts of the marine environment. Again, it is very expensive unless you can operate one close to a load centre or existing connection to a major grid.
You really do have to compare like with like. Right now, there’s no technical or engineering reason not to put nuclear plants close to the ocean and load centres. And once you choose a design these can be mass manufactured. In places that are geologically active the price will go up as special provision for events such as we have seen will need to be made, but even so, that still makes them a lot more plausible a solution than the options you cite.
The serious science indicates that nuclear power is past its zenith already. Nuclear power is a non-renewable or depletable (pun intended) resource. Peak uranium is already in the past just like peak oil.
I hope this long link works.
Click to access EWG_Report_Uranium_3-12-2006ms.pdf
Nuclear energy is not a giant, it is a midget. It provides less of the world’s energy needs than biomass plus hydro. In 2005, nuclear energy provided 6% of the world’s total energy needs whereas biomass provided 4% plus hydro 3% equals 7%. It really puts that weak 6% into perspective when you remember that nuclear power is past its peak as we have already passed Peak Uranium.
Nuclear is already a bad joke decaying in the dustbin of history.
Peak uranium is rubbish in the energy context. You can extract uranium from sea water at reasonable cost for almost an eternity. Not as cheap as current mining but not that prohibitive. Especially given the small cost component associated with fuel and even more so with generation IV.
the link works.
2006?
@Ikonoclast
With the exception of #2 I’d agree. The problem with #2 (I’d certainly agree in principle) is what one means by “full risks”. While it is certainly reasonable to require the producer to insure against harms that might arise despite the fact that the the producer is following best practice, one should not require energy producers to insure against outlandish risks of loss. Personally, I find it perverse that my vehicle insurance covers me for up to $20 million in damage — but if I had to insure for damage that would compensate the entire country, I simply couldn’t have a car at all.
If one applied the maximum damage one could imagine through any contrivance then it’s hard to imagine what industrial or commercial activity could take place at all. As things stand in the US, the Price-Anderson limits have never been approached and with current and projected plant design there’s no reason to think they might be. The recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill showed that even very large sums — (larger than Price Anderson) are not beyond the means of companies to raise and in this case the entire industry would be shouldering the burden.
It seems to me that the appropriate standard should reflect such harms as is reasonably foreseeable in circumstances where the operator is operating according to the best industry practice. In the case of Fukushima, it was reasonably foreseeable that an earthquake and tsunami might affect plant operations in the way that they did and accordingly any damage that might arise from the failure of defence in depth moderated by the probability that this might occur, should be provided for.
@Fran Barlow
In talking about solar you say that “in practice, such schemes simply aren’t feasible at commercial scale.”
In practice nuclear is also having enormous problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor
I agree with JQ that this event has obviously damaged the prospect of any nuclear rennaisance. The dishonest concealing of the scale of the problem by Japanese officials cannot be defended. Yet IMO neither can the degree of hysteria of some of the (non-expert) commentators. It is out of all proportion to any actual or potential threat.
As quokka said, nobody has been harmed by nuclear radiation. They couldn’t be – none of the reactors containment vessels have been breached. Even if there is a meltdown in one, the damage is economic (internal to the reactor), not to any human beings (external). So apart from a small amount of vented gas (not from the reactors) there has been no external threat. The explosions have injured four people on site in an event that has created ten thousand missing. It is almost incidental.
From an enginering point of view, the fact that a series of 40 year old reactors due for retirement can go through a magnitude 9 earthquake, plus severe tsunami, and still not cause any serious hazard is actually a great achievement. Maybe a month from now people will begin to realise that even after a severe natural disaster reactor containment technology of the 1970s was already good enough to preclude the possibility of another Chernobyl. Of course that won’t stop the hysteria.
There is still an oil refinery burning in Tokyo that has been on fire for three days. Shall we ban oil too?
The economic difficulties with nuclear remain. But I think this event proves that the safety fears are groundless. Nevertheless it will be seized upon by ideological opponents to push back nuclear energy another decade. In the mean time I fear we will proudly trumpet building solar plants that generate a few Megawatts of power, and wonder why the earth keeps warming.
@rog
The Finnish government got much too cute and instead of letting Areva run their own show, they wanted to impose local employment rules and intensive (local) bureaucratic oversight. Delays ensued. Costs escalated. The Finnish government however isn’t that bothered because in the end, it will still be worth it on energy independence and environmental grounds.
@Fran Barlow
What concerns me is that in both Finland and France structural defects were common and quality assurance was an ongoing issue.
Will they have the same issues in China and India?
The problem with nuclear power has been highlighted in Japan whatever the final outcome of these particular reactors is (and I hope it is good) – there is, in any human endeavour, the risk of accidents. Either accidents caused by human error, or, as in this case, accidents caused by the vagaries of natural events. While we accept this in all other aspects of technology – train crashes, sinking ships, fires, cyclones, floods, plane crashes, computer glitches – we can’t accept it in the nuclear power industry. The problem is that while a single accident anywhere else in our infrastructure may well cause a lot of death and destruction, that will be limited in extent, confined in geographic area, restricted in time span. An accident in nuclear infrastructure, as we saw in Chernobyl (25 years later farm animals in some parts of Europe are still picking up radiation), is not limited in any of those things. I really hope we don’t discover that awful truth in northern Japan but we may do. This is why the likes of Switkowski was able to rush a major article into Murdoch’s rag within a short time of the tsunami, and why he was on tv this morning. People like Switkowski, nuclear boosters, must not allow the public to be aware of the real risks, or the huge amount of money potentially to be made from pushing nuclear power in Australia may be lost. The hypocrisy of Murdoch using climate change to push nuclear power is breathtaking.
@Ikonoclast
So where in Australia will we put the new hydro? Note the biomass generators like the bagasse mills say the generous REC subsidy of 5c per kwh isn’t enough. Nuclear doesn’t want any subsidies, just a carbon price.
@TerjeP
Extracting uranium from sea water is pure rubbish. Please read the document I linked to which mentions the costs of extraction of uranium from low grade solid ores. It reaches the point where the EROI (energy return on energy invested) is negative. Extraction of uranium from seawater is bound to be a negative EROEI proposition. No person who understands basic physics would be fooled by this absurd fallacy. I’ll post the facts as soon as I can.
@Socrates
A summary of comments made by you on the Japanese nuclear emergency which bear little resemblance to evidence and are simply an uninformed personal opinion yet you complain re other uniformed experts.
1. nobody has been harmed by nuclear radiation
2. They couldn’t be – none of the reactors containment vessels have been breached.
3. Even if there is a meltdown in one, the damage is economic (internal to the reactor), not to any human beings (external).
4. The safety fears are groundless.
Maybe you should closely examine your own preemptive conclusions Socrates. Then again maybe you should wait for real evidence. Imagine a quarter of a million people being evacuated – I cant imagine what for if there werent genuine safety concerns.
@Ikonoclast
That’s true for a once-through reactor design, only able to use about half of the U235 in natural uranium (so about 0.35% of total uranium). Terje is talking about a breeder reactor, which uses all the fuel, by converting the majority of u238 into fissile Pu239. The EROI of the latter approach is positive.
That the reactors have gone through a worst case scenario without catastrophic release of radioactive materials is something in their favour but having to use sea water as coolant seems to indicate it’s been a very close call. I have no doubt it will set back the ‘nuclear renaissance’; we only have to look to the whole climate issue to see how powerful and pervasive misinformation can be when wielded by those with gigadollars at staike. In this case the battle lines are already drawn between those who want action on emissions using nuclear and those who want action without using nuclear; the real winners are likely to be the fossil fuel interests just by default. I would note that it does seem that not all pro-nuclear activist are motivated by climate change; they were pro-nuclear before climate was an issue and politically some are staunchly opposed to environmentalism in it’s most visible forms. Resistance to carbon pricing – that IMO would be the most effective way to weaken popular anti-nuclear sentiment – is (sorry Hermit) almost as firm amongst the pro-nuclear commenters at BNC – as their hostility to investment in renewables.
And all the while the fossil fuel industry has been the beneficiary of every bit of delayed commitment to a makeover of our energy sector and they are ‘friendly’ to nuclear only so long as it’s in addition to, not a replacement for, their products. As opponents to a widespread replacement of fossil fuels by nuclear go, the fossil fuel industry remains a far better positioned and more implacable force than anti-nuclear environmentalism – without need to show their hand. Even entrenched anti-nuclear sentiment is being used to their advantage.
@TerjeP You write
i) price CO2 emissions if appropriate. We can debate how appropriate this is, how best to do it, and what the price should be but these are details. The point is that direct subsidies are not a good idea.
Agreed
ii) don’t mandate public liability insurance out of proportion to the mandates for other industries. There is clearly room for some debate about what is appropriate but the criteria should not be designed to stop nuclear but to manage the risks.
Agreed. We should ensure that both solar and nuclear have the resources necessary to compensate citizens in the event of massive nuclear contamination caused by them. If I was a private insurer, I would be willing to cover the world’s solar industry against this risk for approximately $10.
@Sam
An alternative option would be to offer a benchmark price for new capacity — $4.1bn per GW with 85% availability at full capacity and LOLP at the standards established by existing baseload supply. Assuming bidders meet due diligence, you then take the capacity that has the lowest CO2 lifecycle footprint by offering the winning bidder(s) loan guarantees to build allowing them to borrow with government backing.
Once the capacity is built it is put into commercial operation for one year to establish that the plant can meet the standards of the specification. If it does, the state buys the plant from the developer at the offer price and tenders for operation of the facility. If it fails to meet the spec, government backing for the loan is withdrawn and the developers can please themselves. They own the plant. The state may choose to purchase it at a cost commensurate with its performance.
Nuclear kills but people also kill. 5 executives of Tepco, the Plant operator of Fukushima (it appears formed by an alliance of some of Japans largest and most recognisable firms that own it) TEPCO has had “a rocky past in an industry plagued by scandal”. In 2002, the president of the country’s largest power utility was forced to resign along with four other senior executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of nuclear plant safety records…..at the plants we discuss now.
The problem with nuclear management comes back to the ethics of corporations who design, build and manage these things and there are plenty of examples of unethical, dangerous and unsustainable business practices in many industries especially in the past few decades (a plague of them)…but we cant afford that in nuclear. Its not a train wreck. Its not even a Tsunami or an earthquake which in time a country can recover from. Nuclear when wrecked has the potential for far worse and far more lasting consequences.
Business cost concerns trump safety concerns far too often. If they didnt those nuclear reactors would NOT be situated on the very coastline that has a history of earthquakes and Tsunamis but unless a government is strong enough to regulate and even over regulate safety in, people will not trust nuclear, because you cannot trust the market to regulate itself. It is not efficient. In many instances you also cant trust the governments regulatory apparatus in the modern business world, hijacked as it has been by corporate interests in too many ugly examples.
If Tepco didnt try to claw a bit more profit from an ageing plant (just another five year plan? then another??) – Fuskushima would have been decommissioned a month ago like it was supposed to be. Now its decommissioned anyway whether the owners like it or not. They arent pouring in seawater and boron because they hope to salvage the plant. They are doing that because they hope to prevent massive lawsuits.
The market is punishing nuclear now and from the view of some in here, isnt the free market the best judge?
Should we not be rational about the costs of the Japanese nuclear problem and wait and see what (if anything) the costs are? It is far too early to make a judgement now but probably accurate to foresee a wave of emotion-ridden debate arising. The point is not to ride the crest of irrationalism’s wave buqt to promote rational debate.
Unmitigated climate change is very costly. The coal industry operating under conditions as normal produces 1000s of times the deaths of the nuclear industry. The tsunami is a terrible event with costs that utterly dominate – so far – the costs of the nuclear accidents in Japan
Wait. Learn.