*Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost even a small fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted the world's largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses, towns, bridges and livelihood of 90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square miles of land.*
You can’t dismiss the long term perspective. What happens in the future is important. Your value system is completely opposite to what it should be on this issue; let me explain. In economic theory, *moral hazard* is a tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. The term defines a situation where the behavior of one party may change to the detriment of another after a transaction has taken place. Without moral hazard, there is no way for a party to be motivated to change his behavior, improve his design, or pay for any damage caused. Paying for damage caused is a great economic principle. Without moral hazard, somebody else pays for your damage. You take your profits to the bank and will increase your damage causing behavior to make more profit. Lack of moral hazard caused the global financial meltdown and that financial system has not yet been fixed. Lack of moral hazard is causing global warming since someone else will pay to move the cities up into the hills, not the producers of fossil fuels. Restoring the concept and practice of moral hazard will save this world, without it we are screwed so whatever you do or say, don’t put it down. On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than nuclear > power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining pollution. > > Anyone who believes that global warming is real will certainly agree that > nuclear power is safer even factoring the Chernobyl and Fukushima > accidents. I think alternative energy such as wind and solar would be more > cost-effective and much safer. Unfortunately Japan does not have > significant wind resources, and not much potential solar power either. > > Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely > disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of > energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost > even a small fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted > the world's largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses, > towns, bridges and livelihood of 90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square > miles of land. > > (It turns out 90,000 people were ordered out by the government but 60,000 > others left on their own after they and their local governments detected > radiation far above natural background. TEPCO and the government say they > will not pay compensation to these 60,000 people, even though no one > disputes their land now has lethal levels of radioactivity.) > > If TEPCO had known this might happen I seriously doubt they would've built > any nuclear power reactors. No corporate executive would risk the > destruction of the entire company in a single accident. It reminds me of > Churchill's description of World War I Adm. Jellicoe as "the only man on > either side who could lose the war in an afternoon." > > People say that no one was killed. I expect many of the young workers will > prematurely die of cancer in the next 20 or 30 years. But assuming for the > sake of argument that no one was killed the situation is still > unprecedented. Consider this: > > The U.S. commercial airline fleet consists of 7185 airplanes. That > includes "3,739 mainline passenger aircraft (over 90 seats) . . . 879 > mainline cargo aircraft (including those operated by FedEx and UPS) and > 2,567 regional aircraft jets/turboprops." I believe the average replacement > cost of the big mainline ones is around $150 million per aircraft. > > > http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011-0312 > > http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/ > > Okay imagine that in the middle of one night, when these airplanes are > parked with no one aboard, all 4,615 of the big passenger and freight > airplanes suffer fuel leaks and are destroyed by fire. No one is hurt, but > the entire fleet is destroyed. The replacement cost of the equipment would > be ~$692 billion, which is roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will > cost. Do you think that Boeing, Airbus or any airline would survive this? > Do you think any insurance company would? I don't. > > As it happens, this incident did not destroy the Japanese insurance > industry. That is because no nuclear power plant in the world is covered by > private insurance. When nuclear power was invented, the insurance companies > took a close look and decided it was too risky and they would never cover > it. From the very beginning of nuclear power this risk has been assumed by > national governments only. So the Japanese government and TEPCO customers > are on the hook for this. Obviously, no power company can pay for an > accident that costs ten times their entire annual revenue! > > TEPCO's earnings are here: > > http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/tool/annual/pdf/2011/ar201101-e.pdf > > 5065 billion yen = $62 billion > > Jones Beene and others have correctly pointed out that coal-fired plants > generally spew far more radioactive material into the environment than > nuclear power plants do. This is common knowledge. No one disputes it. > However, the Fukushima plant probably put out more radioactive materials > than all coal fired plants in history have, and I am sure the Chernobyl > reactor did. Here is one description of the radioactive material at a > location 40 km from the Fukushima reactors, a year after the accident, long > after short lived isotopes were gone: > > "Outside the Iitate community hall, the radiation dosimeter carried by one > of my travelling > companions to measure external radiation reads 13.26 microsieverts per > hour -- a level > around one hundred times natural background radiation. When he holds his > dosimeter over > the drainage culvert in front of the hall, it stops working altogether -- > the radiation level has > gone off the scale. One of the things that you quickly learn in a place > like Iitate is that levels > of radiation can vary enormously within a relatively small area. Iitate > has the misfortune to > lie in a spot where the winds from the coast meet the mountains, and > quickly became a > radiation hotspot due to precipitation. Its inhabitants are among the > 150,000 people who > evacuated from the area affected by the nuclear accident, and have no idea > when they will > be able to return home." > > > http://www.greenpeace.org/switzerland/Global/switzerland/de/publication/Nuclear/Lessons%20Learned%20from%20Fukushima%20final%20text.pdf > > > You know darn well that such high levels of radioactivity spread over such > a large area are bound to cause health problems in the years to come. Look > at what happened to U.S. communities exposed to aboveground bomb tests. > > As I mentioned, the government sent Mizuno a soil sample taken many > kilometers from the plant. He found it was so radioactive he was afraid to > work with it and did not know where to store it. Mizuno is usually blasé > about radioactivity. > > - Jed > >
