Underwriter Certification is a market based regulatory system. It harnesses human nature, rather than pretending bureaucrats are self-sacrificing saints. It depends on competition to balance economics and harm, competition among vendors, competition among underwriters, and competition among Certification Societies. But it is not a free market system. Federal and local governments play critical roles in making the system work.
The Role of the Feds
At the Federal Level, Underwriter Certification requires the government to:
1) Eliminate all subsidies and mandates for all potential sources of electricity.
2) Impose an incrementally increasing CO2 tax.
3) Foster competition. Eliminate barriers to entry. Enforce anti-monopoly laws.
4) Protect plants from military attack.
5) Provide a prototype testing facility.
6) Internalize the harm from a release of radioactive material.
a) Establish a firm, automatic compensation scheme that depends on each individual's dose rate profile and nothing else, and require insurance for this liability.
b) Establish the dose rates above which a business can shutdown with compensation.
c) Establish food contamination levels above which the food cannot be marketed.
d) Establish a set of plant boundary and in plant dose rate triggers and the corresponding penalties and interventions.
(1) and (2) require obvious changes in legislation but no organizational changes, except perhaps the elimination of redundant bodies.
(3) and (4) require no changes at all, but Congressional statements might be useful.
(5) will require a tiny bureaucracy devoted only to providing the protopark(s).
This post deals mainly with (6). Underwriter Certification requires elected officials to do their job. They can solicit ``expert" help; but they must select the radiation harm model, which will determine the Lost Life Expectancy associated with each dose rate profile. That harm model must recognize our ability to repair low dose rate radiation damage. They must set the value of a life-day. They must specify the various dose rate triggers and the corresponding penalties and interventions. They must establish the business shut down rules and the food and land contamination levels.
If they abrogate this responsibility to a bureaucracy whose primary incentive is avoiding a release, we will be right back in the current mess.
Legislators are not radiation experts. They can be and many are suborned by lobbyists and special interest groups. But in a democracy they are our only hope. If they cannot balance the benefits of nuclear power against the costs, then nuclear has no future in democratic societies.
Once Congress has set the compensation scheme and established the various dose rate triggers, everything becomes mechanical. The NRC is replaced by the Nuclear Monitoring Agency (NMA). The NMA is simply a system of of radiation monitors spread in and around each plant and a computer. The computer monitors the sensors, and spits out penalties, and collects and distributes compensation according to the rules that the Congress has enacted.
The NMA work force is a bunch of techies, who are good at keeping sensors and computers working. (One of their jobs is to ensure there is backup power for the sensors. At Fukushima, when the grid went down, the radiation sensors in the area went dead.) This is similar to the system for monitoring SO2 emissions from fossil fuel plants except radiation sensors are a lot cheaper, which is good since we will need a lot of them. I would imagine we would need one NMA employee per plant site, supported by maybe 20 people back at headquarters.
The plant underwriters must provide the NMA access to their reserves, so that any compensation is automatic. In return, Congress must make clear that this system is in lieu of and precludes any other tort claims. The NMA can use the IRS and existing law enforcement agencies to enforce the fines, and other penalties.
The Role of the Local Government
No power plant, nuclear or otherwise, should be located in a community that does not want it. Under Underwriter Certification each community interested in hosting a nuclear power plant would prepare a package specifying what it would require in order to accept a plant. They could ask for anything they want. The only requirement is the agreement is irrevocable for the life of the plant.
The bid package could specify:
1) Parks and other public facilities.
2) Staffing levels.
3) The plant's buffer zone.
4) Property and other tax revenues.
5) District heating in cold locales.
6) Shares in the plant's ownership.
7) Seat(s) on the plant's board.
8) The amount of liability insurance the plant must carry.
The last item is the interesting one. The Feds set the radiation harm compensation scheme; but they do not set the amount of insurance that must be carried. This should be based on a generous estimate of the cost of a reasonable worst case release under this compensation scheme. But that cost depends on the local population distribution, the buffer zones, and other site dependent variables. It must be set at the local level.1
Underwriter Certification depends on a final level of competition. Competition among potential sites for the plants. For this to work, nuclear power must be cheap enough so there is enough economic rent to allow the plants to be a good deal for their host communities.
The First Step
The first step in implementing Underwriter Certification is for the Congress to set up an Advisory Group, to recommend what the compensation scheme should look like. The Group should be small and given a very tight deadline, no more than six months. The makeup of that group will determine its success. People who have stake in the current system should be recused. They can fight the Group's recommendations when they are presented to Congress.
An alternative is for Congress to specify how the worst case is to be calculated which methodology would be applied to the site’s population distribution, etc.
Well thought out. I like this positive approach better than just abolish the entire nuclear establishment, which is what I was reading into your previous articles. I finally see how it could work.