🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeffrey Siegal wrote:
> 
> Terry del Fuego wrote:
> > >The most important thing, I think, is the
> > >quality and dedication of the management - we don't want the
> > >Tosco refinery people making the key decisions here. At this time I'm
> > >not so sure we want top PG&E management making these decisions,
> > >either.
> >
> > Bingo.  I have no doubt that it's quite possible in the real world to
> > make nuclear power safe and possibly even safely store the waste.  I
> > also have no doubt that the lazy, "money first, money only!" bipeds
> > can't be bothered to do so.
> >
> > I'm willing to trust nuclear power, but I will _never_ trust people.
> 
> You can trust the "money first, money only" types to safeguard their
> money.  So as long as the plant is privately insured for the full
> potential cost of an accident, sleep soundly.

No nuclear power plant in the United States has EVER been insured for
the full potential cost of a nuclear accident.  In order to make
it even possible to build nuclear power privately,  Congress limited
potential lawsuits for nuclear accidents to (IIRC) $5 million.  
(That would be more like $80 million today.)  Of course, in 1955,
with no commercial power plants in use, lawyers could conjure up
doomsday scenarios with whole nations rendered uninhabitable and
hundreds of billions in damage. (Think Chernobyl burning and spewing
lethal radiation uncontrollably for 1000 years!)

But the fully allocated costs of nuclear power are frightening
enough to private utilities.  The incremental costs of guarding a
waste dump out in the desert are fairly small -- but for 200,000
years?  Businessmen can barely see beyond the next fiscal year,politicians
beyond the next election.  Scientists and
science-fiction writers can contemplate practical solutions
to these ultra-long-term problems, including ways to shorten the
term, but most people's eyes just glaze over.

                                                 Silas Warner