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by pfdietz 778 days ago
> The crux of the Fukushima costing is whether damage actually occurred to property.

The legal requirement would be if it caused land values to decline. It doesn't matter if that decline was for a reason you'd call irrational. It wouldn't even require proof of responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt; "preponderance of evidence" would be enough in the US system.
1 comments
spacebanana7 777 days ago
It’s fair to debate whether the nuclear activities caused the land value to decline or whether the government policy caused the land value to decline.

A government could impose irrational exclusion zones for arbitrary events, it’s unfair to impose the cost on the event itself unless the exclusion zone policy was justified.

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pfdietz 777 days ago
The decline in land value wouldn't be from government policy, it would be from people not wanting to live on land contaminated with sufficient radioactivity. If anything, government policy would be driven by this public sentiment, not the other way around.

I suggest trying to change this is not going to go well; "radiation isn't really bad, trust us, some meltdowns are ok" would be a very challenging PR move.

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