Cleaving the Gordian Knot

Figure 1. Alexander cheating.

If I were Alexander

Since I am running out of things to say about nuclear power, it is time to play king-of-the-world. Suppose I were given the omnipotent capabilities to change the rules currently reserved for the NRC, what would I do to resurrect nuclear power in the United States and show humanity a solution to the Gordian knot of energy poverty and global warming?

1) I'd eliminate all subsidies and mandates of any sort for any power source, starting with the regressive abomination known as tax credits. This includes mandates against high CO2 sources.

2) I'd impose a CO2 tax of $100 per ton increasing at 3% per year, with the revenues dividended on a per capita basis. Kings-of-the-world don't have to repeat the compelling arguments against subsidies and mandates and for pricing externalities.

3) I'd separate nuclear weapons development and nuclear electricity regulation. Nuclear weapons development should be a Department of Defense function. The DOE facilities and the parts of the national labs which are involved in military functions would be transferred to DoD and the military budget.

4) The portions of the national labs dealing with nuclear electricity would be privatized or disbanded, releasing all that talent to the market.

5) I'd stop wasting resources attempting to reduce near background levels of radioactive contamination. Any contamination resulting in dose rates below 0.2 mSv/day is insignificant medically and better left where it is. (This is 5 times less than the 1 mSv/day tolerance dose. Medically unnecessary, but the extra margin puts the site in the same category as high natural background areas such as Kerala.)

6) At this point, the DOE no longer has any real function and disappears. I just saved the taxpayer about 20 billion dollars per year.

7) I'd euthanize the NRC. Instead I'd set up two far smaller agencies. Both agencies would be smallish divisions of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

a) Nuclear Monitoring Agency whose only job would be enforcing the radiation harm compensation scheme which scheme I would specify. Each plant would be surrounded by a grid of radiation sensors. In the event of a release, each individual's dose rate profile would be estimated from the sensors' measurements, using a computer program I would provide. His corresponding Lost Life Expectancy would be computed using the Sigmoid No Threshold radiation harm model. He would be paid $350 real for each lost life day. The compensation would be automatic, uncontestable, and supersede any tort claims. For more detail, see Compensating Radiation Harm.

b)The Nuclear Testpark Agency whose only job would be operating nuclear protopark(s) according to the rules that I would set. Those rules are outlined in Prototype Testing in Practice.

8) I'd summon the Underwriters from Lloyds and the other insurance markets. I'd explain the Atomic Energy Act has been abolished. Henceforth nuclear power plants shall be regulated just like coal and gas with the exception that I have mandated a fixed radiation harm compensation scheme, which replaces the American tort system. I have required insurance for this scheme. You will have to decide what the requirements are for a plant to be insured. I suggest you get together with the TUV's and Classification Societies and work out the rules. I have created a whole new market for you guys. But you had better service it in a competitive manner, or I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

9) I'd exempt all power plants from any EIS requirements. If the locals accept the plant, that's good enough for me.

10) I'd instruct the DOD, DOE, and the Department of Interior to lease Federal lands at cost to any nuclear plant that can get insurance. I'd make all Federal waters available to offshore plants under similar terms.

11) Operators of spent fuel storage vaults would be subject to the same radiation harm compensation scheme as plants. I'd require Fed lands to be leased to any vault or dry cask storage entity that was able to get insurance, and post a bond covering the maintenance of the facility for 99 years. This bond would have to be topped off annually to maintain the 99 year cushion. Loss of insurance or failure to top off would forfeit the bond. The plants could pay the vaults to take their spent fuel or store it on site. In the latter case, they too would have to post a 99 year maintenance bond.

12) I'd eliminate any nuclear export or import controls. I'd remove any barriers to entry to the provision of electricity by whatever source.

13) I'd mandate the FERC promote smallish, democratic coops for the final distribution of electricity. This function is inherently monopolistic. But if the rate payers own the distribution facilities and decides who runs them, then neither rate gouging nor decisions leading to unnecessarily expensive or unreliable electricity will be tolerated. (I've been a member of two such coops, and overall they have done a pretty good job.) The coops could buy electricity from whomever they wanted. They could join together with other coops for this purpose or to produce the power themselves.

14) Monitoring nuclear plants would become the responsibility of the state and locality in which the plant is located. I'd provide the local authorities with a set of emission limits and corresponding penalties and other actions if those trigger levels are exceeded. A sample set of limits is given in Table 1 of Can the NRC be Reborn. The locals would monitor the plant's emissions, and impose the fines, etc on a strictly pass/fail basis. Each state would decide whether it wants nuclear electricity or not. The only requirement is that states that opt for nuclear power must impose the insurer based compensation scheme.

The Tale of the Wise Lady

I'm not even king in my own house. Nobody is crazy enough to make me monarch of anything larger. Alexander the Great is not coming through that door. Underwriter Certification of nuclear power will not happen in the USA. In fact, imposing this sort of market based regulation will be next to impossible in much of the planet. Powerful special interests ranging from fossil fuel companies to wealthy misanthropes and their spoiled brat dupes will adamantly resist it. Well entrenched bureaucracies will fight their own demise with every parasitic tool and trick in the book. Most of the nuclear establishment has a large stake in the status quo. They will be extremely uncomfortable in a competitive environment. They will be at best unsupportive of these changes. The winners will be the rate payers, and they have no lobbyists.

But imagine a poor developing country that knows it needs large amounts of electricity, multiples of its current consumption, and it needs it now. That electricity will catapult the country from the purgatory of the poor to the paradise of the rich. This country has little or no fossil fuel resources. This country has no experience with nuclear power nor any nuclear regulatory apparat.

Suppose this country has a wise and strong leader. Would she adopt a system that

1) allows her people access to cheap, reliable, unobtrusive, pollution free electricity,

2) requires no indigenous nuclear regulatory expertise,

3) provides her country with energy independence?

And if she makes the obvious choice, who else should?