This happened essentially because without a liability cap the entire insurance industry considers nuclear power to be ridiculously risky. So the government, who wanted to protect investors, stepped in.
I feel like a lot of people who dont know this want to educate me about how safe nuclear power truly is.
I was curious about this figure, found info here. Also, apparently the Price-Anderson Act which created the liability limit was passed in 1957, and there's a reasonable argument to be made that it no longer makes sense now that nuclear technology has matured: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n...
> Over time, the "limit of liability" for a nuclear accident has increased the insurance pool to more than $13 billion. > > Currently, owners of nuclear power plants pay an annual premium for $450 million in private insurance for offsite liability coverage for each reactor site (not per reactor). This primary, or first tier, insurance is supplemented by a second tier. In the event a nuclear accident causes damages in excess of $450 million, each licensee would be assessed a prorated share of the excess, up to $131.056 million per reactor. With 95 reactors currently in the insurance pool, i this secondary tier of funds contains about $12.9 billion. Payouts in excess of 15 percent of these funds require a prioritization plan approved by a federal district court. If the court determines that public liability may exceed the maximum amount of financial protection available from the primary and secondary tiers, each licensee would be assessed a pro rata share of this excess not to exceed 5 percent of the maximum deferred premium ($131.056 million); approximately $6.553 million per reactor. If the second tier is depleted, Congress is committed to determine whether additional disaster relief is required.
Note, this is a figure cited by opposition politicians. Nowhere near this much money has actually been spent.
The estimate from the government is a bit under $200 billion, and that includes not just cleanup but also resettling people and continued monitoring of the reactor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#:....
It's nowhere near as low as 200 billion.
Either way while the industry refuses to fully pay for its own risks or acknowledge that it does so its claims of safety via public relations channels are sounding more than a little disingenuous.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United...
And remember, "renewable" energy is really natural gas supplemented by wind and solar. There's no plan for a 100% renewable grid until some massive breakthrough in energy storage happens.
Radiation levels around Fukushima are perfectly fine for habitation and would have been so even if nothing but basic post-accident reactor containment had been done.
It's like comparing the dangers of doctors using 12th century blood-letting and leeches vs getting an MRI.
So far the industry does a lot of the former and zero of the latter. Hell, the op eds about safety routinely coming from nuclear lobbies dont even acknowledge that taxpayers are 99+% on the hook if they fuck up.
Makes me feel even more safe that theyre now lobbying mainly to extend the life of old nuclear plants. What could go wrong?
The reason nuclear power ended in Germany was economical. There's no way nuclear can compete with cheap Russian gas, and Germany had over invested in the latter for over two decades, for reasons that obviously had nothing to do with nuclear power.
Look no further than Gerhard Schröder to see how this started. Again, this is not secret and there were newspaper articles everywhere. Then follow to the path across time and party lines to Angela Merkel who saw it through. Simple economics ruled all the way.
This is not complicated, and there's no reason to see a conspiracy here.
If you're making policy based on scientifically inaccurate ideas then you aren't respecting the science.