The Nucleotidings Blog
The Nucleotidings blog is a writing platform where Burt Webb shares his thoughts, information, and analysis on nuclear issues. The blog is dedicated to covering news and ideas related to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. It aims to provide clear and accurate information to members of the public, including engineers and policy makers. Emphasis is placed on safely maintaining existing nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology with caution, and avoiding nuclear wars at all costs.
Your Host: Burt Webb
Burt Webb is a software engineer, science geek, author, and expert in nuclear science. Burt operates a Geiger counter in North Seattle, and has been writing his Nucleotidings blog since 2012 where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection.
Burt Webb has published several technical books and novels. He works as a software consultant.
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Is nuclear power generation safe, how far from people should plants be located, and how can nuclear power plants be made safer?
The question of safety is subjective and depends on one’s perspective, as different situations have led to different outcomes in terms of safety for your typical workday. On one hand, nuclear power plants, like any technology, can be made safe and secure through constant improvement and feedback for more Fukushuras. On the other hand, sitting 16 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant might make some people feel it is not far enough, while insufficient distance by it self is not a problem if a plant meets safety regulations. Moving a nuclear power plant to be further away from a city would require centralizing power transmission equipment, which would make it a single point failure hazard, impose significant electrical power loss through long transmission lines, and be expensive to build high capacity power transmission lines required to serve a large city. Some ways to make nuclear power plants safer include implementing a Feasibility requirement in PRISM reactor design, which already takes human intervention out of many emergency procedures, more reliance on passive safety systems that cannot control events directly but create conditions that prevent or mitigate their effects, and continuous vigilance, as the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies, not being that the event will be accepted or sought, would help to prevent nuclear accidents.
What do you mean by “Fukushuras”?
“Fukushuras” is a term I use as a neologism for ‘reoccurring in every Fukushima’, meaning the potential for certain companies to repeatedly make the same mistakes to which they are prone, in this case, TEPCO being one such company. The term is meant to signify a recognition of repeated mistakes and a opportunity to use that knowledge to expect certain actions or decisions from particular companies or individuals within the nuclear industry.
This is Part 2 of my post about nuclear insurance issues. (see Part 1 posted on 9/19/14.) Part 1 discussed the current insurance situation and some of the related problems that were presented at the 2014 World Nuclear Association Symposium held in London. In this post, I am going to talk about some possible improvements in the global nuclear insurance industry.
The European Commission recently discussed the fact that current compensation limits are not realistic in view of the probable cost of a major nuclear accident. They also talked about a new system for nuclear accident compensation that would draw up to twenty billion dollars from a variety of sources to create a compensation pool.
The sources of money for the compensation pool would include the self insurance system currently in place in the United States. Additional funds would come from specialist insurance pools and mutual funds. And, finally, drawing funds from a whole new sector of the insurance market that is currently reluctant to get involved with nuclear accident compensation because of the problems with defining nuclear damage and prescription periods for payouts. One of the primary benefits of the proposed system would be to lower the burden the current system places on the taxpayer.
Drawing on this compensation pool of funds would be based on simple triggers that would release payments only in the case of a very serious nuclear accident. One possible trigger would be an event that rated above a level 5 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Another possible trigger would be the detection of certain levels of radiation around the site of an accident. The purpose of the triggers would be to remove current ambiguity about the type of events and situations that should result in compensation of victims.
The new system would not require that every operating nuclear reactor site have highest possible coverage. Individual insurance firms would be able to limit their exposure to only one or two triggering events. If fully implemented, the new insurance model should be obligatory to everyone in the nuclear industry. There has to be enough income from premiums in order to make it worthwhile for the insurance industry to make major financial commitments to the program.
This system of “risk transfer insurance” steps in with “distress funding” when a major unexpected event threatens the financial stability of a company. With this system in place, a nuclear power plant owner could focus on dealing with getting a nuclear accident under control without having to simultaneously worry about paying out compensation claims or figuring out how to secure future funding in light of losses association with the accident.
The bottom line is that a small premium of fractions of a penny per kilowatt hour could result in much greater financial security for the nuclear industry. As nuclear technology improves over time, the cost of the premium could be reduced. Given the virtual certainty of another major nuclear accident in the not too distant future, improving the system of insurance compensation for nuclear accidents victims would be a very good idea.
Plume of Fukushima radiation is traveling very fast via oceanic jet toward the U.S. West Coast. enenews.com
Fennovoima Oy and Rosatom last week moved a step closer to building a new nuclear plant in Finland. nuclearstreet.com
Congress last week approved $13.7 million for cleanup activities at the Portsmouth gaseous diffusion facility in Ohio. nuclearstreet.com
Nuclear energy will have an important role in meeting targets of a new Chinese national climate change plan that sets out emission and clean energy targets for 2020. world-nuclear-new.org
I have mentioned insurance for nuclear power plants in previous blog posts but have never really gone into nuclear insurance in detail. At the World Nuclear Association’s 2014 Symposium in London, Mark Tetley, the managing director of the power, nuclear and construction division at Lloyd’s broker Price Forbes discussed nuclear insurance. “It is my belief that insurers could do more. We could provide cost effective, materially higher financial support for the nuclear industry, reducing the burden of accident costs that currently falls to governments and taxpayers, and thus improving the industry’s image,” he said.
There are two types of nuclear insurance for operating nuclear power plants. The first type of insurance covers the plant, building and income stream of the owners. The second kind of nuclear insurance covers payments to victims of nuclear accidents at a plant. This type of nuclear insurance is based on international treaties drawn up when nuclear power was young. An important feature of the treaties is a cap on the liability of a nuclear plant operator for damage caused and harm inflicted by a nuclear accident. Tetley says that the national and local laws based on these treaties are out of date. Both the nuclear industry and the insurance business have grown enormously since the treaties were implemented.
In the United States, the Price Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of accidents. Once the cost of an accident has passed a half a billion dollars, then additional costs are supposed to be covered by the assets of the owners of the nuclear power plant where the accident occured. Unfortunately, it is not improbable that a company might not be able to pay all the additional costs and would have to declare bankruptcy. In this situation, the additional costs would have to be borne by the U.S. taxpayers.
Only the first three hundred and seventy five billion dollars of an accident are covered by insurance in the U.S. There is a fund that all U.S. nuclear power plant operators would pay into in the event of a major nuclear accident. Currently, that fund would collect about thirteen billion dollars. Estimates of the cost of the Fukushima accident are currently at forty billion dollars and the estimated cost of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine is over eighty billion dollars. In light of previous major accidents, the thirteen billion dollar fund of the U.S. is not even nearly enough.
International treaties on nuclear liability are currently in the process of implements a broader definition of nuclear damage which must be compensated. This includes considering compensation claims for up to thirty years after an accident. Insurers say that they simply cannot afford to offer insurance that would satisfy the new requirements. In addition, different countries have chose different limits on nuclear liability. Belgium caps liability at about a billion and a half dollars while China caps liability at forty five million. This is a huge different. Trying to comply with all the different caps and regulations across the globe is very difficult for international insurance companies.
(See Part 2)
Experts highly suspicious of Japan’s claim that nobody suffered acute radiation syndrome after Fukushima. enenews.com
More damage will come as radioactive material from Fukushima biomagnifies in food chain. enenews.com
Russia has announced two new milestones in its ‘Proryv’, or Breakthrough, project to enable a closed nuclear fuel cycle. world-nuclear-news.org
