Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
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In fifty years, has a red cent ever been dished out as a result of PA? I don't think so. I suppose that in 1958 it might have been fair to call PA a subsidy, but it's been fifty years now.
Moreover, the "fair value" of the act is extremely small. The PA act only matters if an accident occurs where total costs exceed $10 billion. The likelihood of such a scenario is extremely small (once every million rx-yrs?), making the annual cost (or value) of PA insurance practically negligible. It's been 10,000 rx-years now for LWR, and only one incident of any note has occurred. That accident never came anywhere close to $10 billion in settlements.
Now from the standpoint of the federal government consider the benefits of the PA act. How much does the PA generate in local, state and federal taxes revenues? Based on NEI stats, it might be $7 billion or so annually, maybe even $10 billion. Much of that goes to the federal government. Some subsidy: not one red cent in exchange for billions annually.
Of course the most important benefit of the act is that 788 billion kw-hrs are NOT generated by fossil fuels. This benefit is infinite by any sane measure. I wouldn't even bother to put a dollar value on this, as the real benefit is the countless lives that were not cut short by choking on emissions from a coal plant.
Plus, the $10B cap isn't really a cap. If costs exceed that amount (which is very unlikely anyway), then Congress has the authority to decide what to do.
I don't believe that the $100 million figure attached to TMI-2 was paid out as part of the PA act. I think the industry paid the tab.
Yes, so essentially the federal government may or may not pick up the tab if it gets to over $10 billion. PA is merely the mechanism for streamlining the process. How anyone can view this as a subsidy to the nuclear power industry is beyond me. As a piece of insurance handed to the nuclear power industry, PA is of little value.