NEI Nuclear Notes

One of the issues of the oil spill in the gulf has been the issue of liability – that is, how much on the hook should BP, in this case, be for the spill. Currently the figure is $75 million. Here’s what’s been proposed: Bill S.3305 , the "Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act" would cap BP's liability at $10 billion, even if damages from the gulf oil spill surpass that figure. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced this in the Senate with 14 co-sponsors. The description above is a bit inaccurate: the legislation is not specific to BP but simply amends the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to raise the amount as stated. In any event, it has now been blocked by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Why? It would be impossible or perhaps close to impossible for any energy company that is smaller than the super majors, smaller than the national oil companies, to operate in the O.C.S. [outer continental shelf] $10 billion in strict liability would preclude their abilit...

Wasserman asks: Who Will Pay for America's Chernobyl? Answer: No one – Because it can’t happen here. The premise of Wasserman's article is erroneous. It is physically impossible for any U.S. nuclear power plant to explode like the Chernobyl reactor did. They are a completely different design that cannot run out of control and explode. And (unlike Chernobyl) all U.S. nuclear plants have heavily fortified containment buildings that are designed to withstand the worst case accident, nor can our reactors catch on fire. The fact is, Chernobyl can't happen here. The worst thing you can do to a U.S. light water reactor - overheat the fuel and cause it to melt - is what happened at Three Mile Island 30 years ago. But the TMI accident had no impact on the health of the people or the environment around the facility because of all of the safety systems built into the plant. With all of the changes and additional safety measures made because of the lessons learned from TMI, it is v...

Providing a corrective to an Op-ed that ran in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune , Marv Fertel, NEI's Executive VP and Chief Nuclear Officer had this to say, The Price-Anderson Act was established by the federal government in 1957 and has evolved into one of the best third-party liability programs in the world, with a minimum of $10 billion worth of insurance coverage in the unlikely event of a nuclear power plant accident. The program was subsidized by the federal government in its inception, but even then the government made money on the premiums from electric companies that owned nuclear power plants. Under this framework, the public has paid nothing due to nuclear power accidents, while insurance pools have paid about $200 million in claims and the industry has paid $21 million to the federal government in indemnity fees. The nuclear power industry must provide $10 billion in insurance coverage to compensate the public in the event of an accident. So even if an individua...

Following up on the link we provided to yesterday's debate at Shakesville , Rod Adams has done a nice cost/benefit analysis on the Price Anderson Act . For more information on Price Anderson, click here .