Nuclear dilemma: Adequate insurance too expensive [View All]

Nuclear dilemma: Adequate insurance too expensive

BERLIN (AP) — From the U.S. to Japan, it's illegal to drive a car without sufficient insurance, yet governments have chosen to run the world's 443 nuclear power plants with hardly any insurance coverage whatsoever.

Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, which will leave taxpayers there with a massive bill, highlights one of the industry's key weaknesses — that nuclear power is a viable source for cheap energy only if plants go uninsured. The plant's operator, Tepco, had no disaster insurance.

Governments that use nuclear energy are torn between the benefit of low-cost electricity and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, which could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country.

The bottom line is that it's a gamble: Governments are hoping to dodge a one-time disaster while they accumulate small gains over the long-term. Yet in financial terms, nuclear incidents can be so devastating that the cost of full insurance would be so high as to make nuclear energy more expensive than fossil fuels.

The cost...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h6m6Z-A7ZI8TAPBRy35Dlp_z8oiA?docId=6274d45186a24d978d43b1dff293cea4


Good article that discusses what the fission industry tries so hard to ignore; what would be the cost of, for example, having to abandon NYC or Chicago?