
A Different Take on Fukushima - baud147258
http://www.funraniumlabs.com/2020/07/a-different-take-on-fukushima/
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jhallenworld
Not so directly related to the story, but Fukushima has clarified my
understanding of the risks of nuclear power.

The risk is to property directly, and not so much to human life. Usually there
is enough warning for people to get away, but the contamination is extremely
expensive to clean up, leading to exclusion zones.

[https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-
costs-...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-will-
approach-one-trillion-dollars-just-for-nuclear-disaster/)

The bottom line is that no sane insurance company will fully cover nuclear
power operations. No other power source has this problem.

But there is insurance:

[https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-
accid...](https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accidents)

$13B does not seem enough, and taxpayers are supposed to pay any amount
exceeding this.

~~~
sradman
> The risk is to property directly, and not so much to human life.

Exactly, both large swaths of land contaminated by low-grade radioactive
material as well as the loss of the failed reactor/plant. Considering the high
capital costs involved, any premature failure of a nuclear plant is
devastating economically.

The original assumption was that failures would be extremely rare but the
health costs associated with failures would be enormous; the opposite proved
to be true.

Fiscal conservatives should be up in arms; not greens nor tech-utopians.

~~~
Iwan-Zotow
But they are rare, like once in twenty years

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macintux
Several interesting points in that piece, but the one I was most struck by was
the argument that reducing redundancy (“waste”) in emergency response services
was demonstrably a bad idea when a crisis actually hits.

