🚀 go-pugleaf

Silas Warner wrote:
> No nuclear power plant in the United States has EVER been insured for
> the full potential cost of a nuclear accident. 

I know that.  See the Price-Anderson Act.  That's actually a good reason
to be scared of nuclear power.  

If utilities could secure private insurance, that would be a better
reason to trust them.

> 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?  

First, it doesn't need to be guarded for 200,000 years.  After a
relatively short time, the highly radioactive components decay and it
becomes low-level waste.

Second, the cost of 200,000 years of guarding is not really a
significant concern economically beyond a few hundred years, if that,
due the time value of money.

Third, the cost is still pretty low, when compard to the amount of
eletricity produced, and the cost of producing it some other way.  Were
it not for the enormous construction cost of nuclear power plants, the
economics would be there.  The indepedent operators who have purchased
nuclear power plants at a fraction of their construction cost are making
a ton of money, and that's after making the necessary payments into the
fund for decommissioning and waste disposal.