Yes, and that one is society. It what we do with any risk that is so great that if any company would have to carry it then the company would fold and society would still have to carry it.
Hydro power is one prime example. If a dam would break the damage downstream would be too high for any power company to pay. Individuals living downstream might have insurance, but no insurance company can handle the cost of a major flood. The only entity able to do so would be the government.
An other example is forest fires caused by poor maintenance of power lines. Such things happens from time to time and it not the power company or their insurance that will cover if half a country is up in literal flames and a few towns are lost. There might be a bit of bad press, a few millions/billions in damages, but the true cost won't land anywhere near the power company.
Fully eliminate the risk of floods and fire from the power grid would be very difficult, and putting the power company on the hook for the full cost would be impractical and counter productive. Society need electricity. The best they can do is impose regulations, and in exchange society will pick up some of the risk.
Those companies can and should be held responsible for the damages they cause. You can't just privatize all the profits and leave all the losses to the government! If you want to do something so dangerous nobody is willing or even able to insure you, you should not be allowed to do it.
[0]: https://damsafety.org/sites/default/files/files/Legal%20Liab...
When a company files for bankruptcy the result is a legal process where the company seeks relief from debt. PG&E caused California second biggest wild fire named "Camp Fire" which destroyed 1,329 structures, and burned 963,309 acres, with an estimated cost of $16bn. The next year they caused a second wild fire, and yes they did get sued for that. They are estimated to have caused over 40 wild fires.
In the bankruptcy filing that got accepted by the judge they might be paying $13.5 billion for all of the wildfires, with half of that being paid as "stocks" in the company (for how much that is worth). All the remaining costs of the wildfires will be carried by the victims. Since September 30 this year the total amount PG&E has actually paid is $5.08 billions.
If one of Californias nulcear power plant would explode tomorrow with the effect of 40 wild fires then the result would be identical to PG&E. They would be sued, they would file for bankruptcy, and then a portion of the true costs will be paid out. That is reality regardless of what you thought it was.
[0]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article165448747.html
As a California government agency it’s self insured by the state government, which is a very different situation than a private company building a power plant exclusively to generate power.
As to bankruptcy, insurance is normally required. Wildfires are an odd case because unlike nuclear the people who suffer damage are partially responsible for failing to mitigate risks as eventually fires will happen.
Who is the primary owners in a power company matter very little. In many countries, especially in EU, the government tend to be the majority owners in power companies operating nuclear power plants. It doesn't change the risk factors.
Also I would never blame victims of flooding or wildfires. People who choose to live downstream of a hydro power dam, or chooses to live in areas with high risk of wild fires, has just as much power as people who choose to live next to a nuclear power station. If operators of dangerous and critical infrastructure do a bad job then the blame tree start with the owners and trickles down to each leaf.
People have been making dams for quite literally thousands of years before we discovered AC electricity. They are useful structures to ensure water security and reduce damage and deaths from regular flooding. So yes the Marib Dam for example produces electricity and it’s failure would pose a risk, but it’s on the same location people a dam failed all the way back in 575 and there is evidence of earlier dams in that location going back to 1750 BC.
For power generation, humans just need electricity. This requires large networks of high voltage lines crisscrossing the country. Those lines will start wildfires at some rate X. A utility cannot survive being liable for all damages by that wildfire.
So what you do - is everyone buys insurance and the government sets "best practice" regulations designed to reduce X to a number considered reasonable. Investigations that result in litigation are usually what happens when the company has clearly violated best practice.
The problem with all things nuclear is that our vision of acceptable number and severity of nuclear incidents is that it needs to be negative.
Poland just decided to build our nuclear to the tune of 40bn eur and their first contract is with westinghouse and their ap1000 reactor but also signed a letter of intent with KHNP to also built out further. I'm sure they cost Westinghouse for strategic reasons though and not because of price.
heck.. even Finland with their massively delayed and over budget Olkiluoto 3 also plans to built out even more nuclear. it's almost like some countries are now realizing that putting your faith in the weather gods for supply safety is not a good idea and that solar and wind are simply not viable for baseload or the grid in general.
i still think wind and solar has a place for creating synthetic fuels, but let's stop pretending it's been comparable to nuclear for the grid.
edit:
also.. are your saying IEA has wrong data? and if so, would you mind bringing since sources into your argument about people being way too optimistic
United Arab Emirates has had massive issues. Unit 1 began construction in 2012 and was “completed” in 2018, but didn’t enter commercial operation until 2021 due to literally hundreds of issues. “In December 2018, it was reported that voids were found in the concrete containment buildings for units 2 & 3. Grease was found to have leaked through the unit 3 containment, which may have been due to a crack in the concrete.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
South Korea also ran into multiple delays, “Shin Kori-3 was initially scheduled to commence operation by the end of 2013, but the schedules for both Units 3 & 4 were delayed by approximately one year to replace safety-related control cabling, which had failed some tests.”
Poland isn’t a failure at this point, but they don’t have a power plant yet and their cost projections before delays aren’t very rosy.
Objectivity it’s reasonable to blame bad management for issues within a single project or even country, but when several different projects in different countries run into issues that suggest more fundamental problems.
If Britain decided to build 10 APR-1400 in the next 10 years with each one they would improve.
France built like 50 reactors in 15 years with 60s technology. Yes they had issue early on but after a while they were completing reactors within 4-5 years and very few issues.
The reality is from 2000 to 2020 every country in Europe could have 100% green energy if they had just started building multiple reactors every year.
Germany could have easily have a green grid by now. A nation like Germany could very much have gone and do that, just as France did in 1980s.
European nuclear initiatives are mostly about strategic concerns to get out of Russian gas. Economically, even the cheapest nuclear power on Earth can't compete with gas, if it is pipelined. (It can compete if it is liquified.) Or you need to penalize gas to unreasonable degrees for carbon emission.
Meanwhile the largest known deposits of Uranium can be found in Australia and Canada, making them much safer sources for western countries.
If EU countries allow fracking domestically, this will change, of course. Though the same "green" movement that opposes nuclear is likly to try to block this. Maybe we should look at how much funding these people get from Russia?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-s...
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-brande...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/putins-green-fifth-co...
Just to pick a few random google results.
As far as I can tell, it's in Russia's interest to encourage any energy source that synergizes with NG (ie wind and solar) and to work against energy sources that are full alternatives (nuclear, coal and large scale storage), while at the same time ignore the downsides of NG.
It would make sense to fund groups aligned with these interests, even those that are generally negative to Russia politically. Such funding would not need to be done directly, but could be done through subsidiaries.
Must be a conspiracy theorist.
Storage does not need any "breakthroughs". It will be built out when there is renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In the meantime, NG plants fill shortfalls.
Globally 16% of electricity is produced by traditional hydro annually that can cover the majority of the projected need for storage in a pure wind/solar grid.
Also, by the time we need significant batteries the costs will have fallen even further. If you want to eventually cover 10% of the grids daily demand from batteries using projected costs from 2030 to 2040+ it doesn’t look unreasonable.
Renewables with straight gas backup and no other storage are already lower carbon than any other option, and batteries and off river PHES have only just started getting cheap.
The breakthroughs we need to cover the final gap have already been made if you're paying any attention at all.
Stop concern trolling
It is also perfectly capable of meeting dispatchable loads like heating, chemical production, and EV charging, and adding them to the grid will bring the ability to meet electricity even higher. Considering the storage and dispatchable low carbon energy that already exists, the remaining part would produce less carbon than would be released by expanding Uranium mining.
There is not enough uranium to meet 50% of world electricity demand using current technology for long enough to wear out a single generation of wind turbines or solar panels.
Your imaginary all nuclear future is both impossoble and worse than the trajectory we are currently on.
If we are being honest, that also has a lot to do with why nuclear is so expensive.
The rate and cost of failures directly relate to insurance costs. A 1 in 100,000 chance per year to cause a 500 billion dollar accident represents a ~5 million per year insurance cost to offset that risk before considering the risk premium associated with insurance. And that’s on top of the normal risks for large complexes that have little to do with nuclear just high voltage equipment etc. Unsubsidized insurance costs are something like 0.2c/kWh which is quite significant for these projects.
In the end you see a lot of people talking nonsense around nuclear costs using wildly optimistic numbers, but there hasn’t been a power plant built and operated in the last 20 years that come even close to these numbers. Let alone when you start to compare predictions for decommissioning costs with actual decommissioning costs.