How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment

Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by skybrian on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:27AM (#12725859)

Nobody died from Fukoshima but a large area had to be evacuated. When calculating the cost of nuclear power, you have to include the cost of insurance to cover relocating the surrounding communities in case of an accident.

And if anyone did require power companies to have this insurance, it's likely that nobody would invest.

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Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by paulmd on Monday October 17, 2016 @12:32PM (#12726579)

Similarly, we should also cover the cost of insurance to cover areas contaminated from coal fly ash spills (including waste seepage downstream, not just direct coverage).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

If other power sources had to factor in the full costs of such contamination they would be uneconomical as well. We need to have power if we want to have nice things, it's purely a question of figuring out how to do it in the most responsible way possible.

For that matter we should probably also factor in upstream contamination - landscape destruction due to large-scale strip mining for coal [1], or pollution from lithium/neodymium refining and silicon fabrication. These are measures where uranium mining has essentially zero pollution but both coal, solar, and wind all have fairly significant pollution footprints.

[1] 1 year's supply of fuel for a 100MW (?) power plant visualized, coal vs nuclear: http://i.imgur.com/Qst8z.gif

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Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by lmm on Monday October 17, 2016 @01:01PM (#12726850)

> Nobody died from Fukoshima but a large area had to be evacuated. When calculating the cost of nuclear power, you have to include the cost of insurance to cover relocating the surrounding communities in case of an accident.

Sure, but again you need to compare like with like. How many people relocated per megawatt? The numbers for the alternatives are worse.

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Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by stcredzero on Monday October 17, 2016 @01:14PM (#12726979)

How many people relocated per megawatt? The numbers for the alternatives are worse.

In some places, hydro isn't very pretty by this measure.

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Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by nickff on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:57AM (#12726211)

If you require power companies to get all this insurance, you no longer have any reason to regulate them (using the government), as there are no externalities (because the company bears the costs of a failure). This might be a good trade-off, as insurers are likely to be more judicious and less political with their inspections and requirements.

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