| The problem is that the law can easily place blame for big huge accidents but can't doesn't put any blame on massively distributed harm. A lot of the dangers of traditional fossil fuel generation doesn't stick to energy companies. They increase the chance you get cancer or respiratory diseases, but there is never a direct link. You'll never know if global warming caused a forest wire that wipes out several towns. But when a nuke plant goes belly up, you know it ruins the small town it is in. But the liability cap is part of a government enforced insurance scheme. It's a super highly regulated industry. It's not like they can ruin your house and stiff you. The law is set up so nuke plants don't abuse corporate liability shields and then go bankrupt in an accident without paying for it. Some claim it is a form of subsidy, but the government is allowed to retroactively raise rates if it turns out the risk profile wasn't accurately measured. It's really not that different from unemployment insurance companies have to pay for. The reason it isn't just covered by private insurance is because when plants were first built, it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite. Insurance works on the law of large numbers. But with a low probability, catastrophically highly loss, it's impossible to insure. If you exclude Chernobyl (and you should since modern nuke plants can't have a core explosion) there aren't any confirmed or even estimated deaths in the commercial nuclear power field. Even a super conservative estimate (no threshold radiation) would yield under 200 people world wide. Shit, iPhones kill people than that a year (texting while driving) |
Sure. They get this type of massive subsidy too.
They can both be consigned to the scrapheap of history if it were mandated that all new generation capacity had to come from renewable sources. This is, by the way, a very easily achievable goal given the last few years' plunge in the price of renewable energy.
>it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite.
Which is why I'm still unconvinced about their relative safety.
As far as I'm concerned Merkel was right to adjust Germany's energy policy to favor renewables after Fukushima. There's just no point in taking the risk when the alternatives are there.