Very interesting. I didn't know anything about the history of certification and insurance, except that Loyds would figure out how to insure just about anything. I didn't know about the Sultana tragedy either. Your plan for Ucert for nuclear plants is very thorough and well thought out.
One reason why the Sultana tragedy was buried in history was that Lincoln was assassinated three days later. Many of the soldiers on board were mistreated Andersonville POW's. They were in no condition to survive being dumped into the cold water. The Captain was grifter who pocketed all sorts of money for overloading his ship while ignoring warnings about the condition of his boilers. Sometimes its hard to be proud of the species.
Thanks - I love history, although very much a novice. Funny -I hated it in school, thought it was boring. Have you read the recent book "Rudolph Diesel"? He invented the diesel engine. He conceived the idea about 1864, ironically a year before the Sultana exploded. There's a lot of history in the book, including Kaiser Wilhelm, Germany, Britain, and Churchill's adoption of the diesel submarine thanks to Rudolph. In 1907 he came to America and encouraged the switch from steam to diesel in our locomotives.
Your Underwriters proposal makes sense for existing LWRs but makes no sense for urban located low pressure sodium cooled FNRs. I am sure that your concepts could be extended but a lot of details need changing.
One issue that I am concerned about is exempting the owner from minimizing the consequences to the public of an attack by a RPG or like antitank weapon. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such weapons in circulation. In my view the reactor enclosure must be sufficiently robust to protect the surrounding public from the consequences of an attack by a single RPG.
Likewise, the enclosure should be sufficiently robust to protect the public from a low angle aircraft impact. In my view it is not practical to make the enclosure resistant to a laser guided armor penetrating bomb or missile. Such an attack is an act of war. By contrast, a wide variety of criminal groups can access RPGs.
The regulatory system must be technology agnostic. If something has to be changed to accommodate a particular technology, then there's something wrong with either the regulatory system or the technology.
I am a fan neither of small scale nor putting nuclear power plans in urban locations.
All nuclear plants need a buffer zone. Near the plant peak harm drops off at roughly the 4th power of distance, which means buffer zone distance drop off at the 0.25 power of plant rating as you move down in size. If 2 kilometers is an adequate buffer zone for a 1GW plant, then a tiny 1 MW plant needs a buffer zone of 365 m. While we diddle around with toy reactors, the Chinese are doing it right. Put 4 or more, preferably more, 1 GW reactors at a single site.
An RPG will at most punch a tiny hole in containment without any prescriptive regs. Given an adequate buffer zone, there will be nil radiological consequences to the public.
On aircraft strike, where do you stop? The NRC assumes a very shallow glide path. But a skilled pilot can come over the plant just above stall at say 3000 feet, and dive bomb the plant with his aircraft, before his control surfaces start to fall off.
The best protection against this is an adequate buffer zone.
The only tiny niggle I have with this is the statement that the local plant host community only sees a small benefit to go with the risk they accept. I think the benefits to nuclear communities have historically been massive, and closing of Indian Point, Zion, etc. have shown just how much value there is in being a host community.
It doesn’t change the analysis at all, it only would make the calculus easier for potential hosts.
Your profile says youre in favor of abundance. Me too. That means we must be careful in how we define benefit. From society's point of view, the benefit that is produced by the plant is the electricity, and the cheaper that electricity is the greater the benefit. The resources, including people, that the plant consumes are costs to society. Suppose by some magic improvement in technology, a plant goes from needing 200 people to 100 to produce the same amount of electricity. Society as whole is better off because now those 100 people can produce wealth elsewhere. Of course, the immediate effect is 100 people are out of work. But, as painful as it to those people, that's a transient.
The tragedy of Indian Point is not what happened to Buchanan, N.Y; but rather the fact that that power will either be more costly or will not be produced . The 15 million people that IP served are less wealthy. We are all a little less wealthy. Of course, that loss is spread over a very large number of people. So it goes unnoticed.
Those of us who are in favor of abundance cannot bemoan the loss of jobs when a plant is shut down. We must focus on the loss of electricity.
I guess you could phrase the concept of a benefit strictly in that way, although it won't really help sell the idea to host communities. However you want to define the value, it will flow through the host community in many ways. Of course that gives a nice attack vector for the new dealers and the marxists to extract value, but the reason that exists is because of the value being created in the first place.
I'm all for better designs in the future that only require 10-20 (or 1-2?) operators per plant, but those jobs are going to be responsible for a staggering amount of economic value being produced so they will be pretty highly compensated and desirable. Even as the cost per unit of electricity goes down, the economic value generation will increase because energy is the underpinning of everything productive. These plants will also likely be able to be ganged together so that these will be excellent places to have a clean multi-industry hub location, and that will look like something Ayn Rand fans and new dealers alike can love.
Eventually the electricity runs out, and people install noisy, polluting generators - if they can afford them. Witness Sub Saharan Africa when "Majority" Rule (ie. 95% Dictatorships) ensued, after Colonial Rule was voluntarily or forced out, from about 1960 to 1985. British, French, Belgian and Portugese were all involved and left the "colonies" to slip back to third world status.
If there is $10-15 billion of insurance available, where is it? The Price Anderson Act requires nuclear plants to buy the maximum amount of private insurance available. If their business is so profitable (and I agree it looks profitable historically), why doesn't ANI have any competitors? And why doesn't it offer larger amounts of coverage? I have been confused about this for some time. As you say, Lloyd's and other reinsurance companies have written much larger policies for other types of disaster. Something about nuclear power must be driving them to keep their exposure low.
The Price Anderson Act sets up a backup system in which all US plants are retroactively responsible for losses over an NRC set figure. Currently, the NRC sets that figure at 500 million. You will have to ask the NRC why they set it that low. See
The NRC says "In a letter dated July 14, 2013, American Nuclear Insurers (ANI), the underwriter of American nuclear liability policies, acting on behalf of its member companies, notified the NRC that it will be increasing 'its maximum available primary nuclear liability limit from $450 million to $500 million, effective on January 1, 2024' (ADAMS accession No. ML23212A986)."
The letter from ANI gives no explanation of how they decided this limit, but it doesn't sound like it was up to the NRC.
Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act is quite clear. It's the NRC that decides what the primary liability limit is. The source for the 10-15B availability is the World Nuclear Association
Thank you for providing the source. It also says that covering those amounts would require a tighter definition of nuclear damage and a shorter limitation on claims, and could not comply with existing international conventions. Those seem difficult to arrange, but not impossible.
Absolutely, we must have a far tighter definition of damages.The current US tort system is totally uninsurable. The UCert Manual spends some 20 pages describing a compensation system that would work.
Very interesting. I didn't know anything about the history of certification and insurance, except that Loyds would figure out how to insure just about anything. I didn't know about the Sultana tragedy either. Your plan for Ucert for nuclear plants is very thorough and well thought out.
Al,
One reason why the Sultana tragedy was buried in history was that Lincoln was assassinated three days later. Many of the soldiers on board were mistreated Andersonville POW's. They were in no condition to survive being dumped into the cold water. The Captain was grifter who pocketed all sorts of money for overloading his ship while ignoring warnings about the condition of his boilers. Sometimes its hard to be proud of the species.
Thanks - I love history, although very much a novice. Funny -I hated it in school, thought it was boring. Have you read the recent book "Rudolph Diesel"? He invented the diesel engine. He conceived the idea about 1864, ironically a year before the Sultana exploded. There's a lot of history in the book, including Kaiser Wilhelm, Germany, Britain, and Churchill's adoption of the diesel submarine thanks to Rudolph. In 1907 he came to America and encouraged the switch from steam to diesel in our locomotives.
Hello Jack:
Your Underwriters proposal makes sense for existing LWRs but makes no sense for urban located low pressure sodium cooled FNRs. I am sure that your concepts could be extended but a lot of details need changing.
One issue that I am concerned about is exempting the owner from minimizing the consequences to the public of an attack by a RPG or like antitank weapon. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such weapons in circulation. In my view the reactor enclosure must be sufficiently robust to protect the surrounding public from the consequences of an attack by a single RPG.
Likewise, the enclosure should be sufficiently robust to protect the public from a low angle aircraft impact. In my view it is not practical to make the enclosure resistant to a laser guided armor penetrating bomb or missile. Such an attack is an act of war. By contrast, a wide variety of criminal groups can access RPGs.
Regards,
Charles Rhodes
Charles,
The regulatory system must be technology agnostic. If something has to be changed to accommodate a particular technology, then there's something wrong with either the regulatory system or the technology.
I am a fan neither of small scale nor putting nuclear power plans in urban locations.
All nuclear plants need a buffer zone. Near the plant peak harm drops off at roughly the 4th power of distance, which means buffer zone distance drop off at the 0.25 power of plant rating as you move down in size. If 2 kilometers is an adequate buffer zone for a 1GW plant, then a tiny 1 MW plant needs a buffer zone of 365 m. While we diddle around with toy reactors, the Chinese are doing it right. Put 4 or more, preferably more, 1 GW reactors at a single site.
An RPG will at most punch a tiny hole in containment without any prescriptive regs. Given an adequate buffer zone, there will be nil radiological consequences to the public.
On aircraft strike, where do you stop? The NRC assumes a very shallow glide path. But a skilled pilot can come over the plant just above stall at say 3000 feet, and dive bomb the plant with his aircraft, before his control surfaces start to fall off.
The best protection against this is an adequate buffer zone.
The only tiny niggle I have with this is the statement that the local plant host community only sees a small benefit to go with the risk they accept. I think the benefits to nuclear communities have historically been massive, and closing of Indian Point, Zion, etc. have shown just how much value there is in being a host community.
It doesn’t change the analysis at all, it only would make the calculus easier for potential hosts.
R,
Your profile says youre in favor of abundance. Me too. That means we must be careful in how we define benefit. From society's point of view, the benefit that is produced by the plant is the electricity, and the cheaper that electricity is the greater the benefit. The resources, including people, that the plant consumes are costs to society. Suppose by some magic improvement in technology, a plant goes from needing 200 people to 100 to produce the same amount of electricity. Society as whole is better off because now those 100 people can produce wealth elsewhere. Of course, the immediate effect is 100 people are out of work. But, as painful as it to those people, that's a transient.
The tragedy of Indian Point is not what happened to Buchanan, N.Y; but rather the fact that that power will either be more costly or will not be produced . The 15 million people that IP served are less wealthy. We are all a little less wealthy. Of course, that loss is spread over a very large number of people. So it goes unnoticed.
Those of us who are in favor of abundance cannot bemoan the loss of jobs when a plant is shut down. We must focus on the loss of electricity.
Indeed I am almost pathologically pro abundance.
I guess you could phrase the concept of a benefit strictly in that way, although it won't really help sell the idea to host communities. However you want to define the value, it will flow through the host community in many ways. Of course that gives a nice attack vector for the new dealers and the marxists to extract value, but the reason that exists is because of the value being created in the first place.
I'm all for better designs in the future that only require 10-20 (or 1-2?) operators per plant, but those jobs are going to be responsible for a staggering amount of economic value being produced so they will be pretty highly compensated and desirable. Even as the cost per unit of electricity goes down, the economic value generation will increase because energy is the underpinning of everything productive. These plants will also likely be able to be ganged together so that these will be excellent places to have a clean multi-industry hub location, and that will look like something Ayn Rand fans and new dealers alike can love.
Eventually the electricity runs out, and people install noisy, polluting generators - if they can afford them. Witness Sub Saharan Africa when "Majority" Rule (ie. 95% Dictatorships) ensued, after Colonial Rule was voluntarily or forced out, from about 1960 to 1985. British, French, Belgian and Portugese were all involved and left the "colonies" to slip back to third world status.
If there is $10-15 billion of insurance available, where is it? The Price Anderson Act requires nuclear plants to buy the maximum amount of private insurance available. If their business is so profitable (and I agree it looks profitable historically), why doesn't ANI have any competitors? And why doesn't it offer larger amounts of coverage? I have been confused about this for some time. As you say, Lloyd's and other reinsurance companies have written much larger policies for other types of disaster. Something about nuclear power must be driving them to keep their exposure low.
dogiv,
The Price Anderson Act sets up a backup system in which all US plants are retroactively responsible for losses over an NRC set figure. Currently, the NRC sets that figure at 500 million. You will have to ask the NRC why they set it that low. See
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-price-anderson-suicide-pact
The NRC says "In a letter dated July 14, 2013, American Nuclear Insurers (ANI), the underwriter of American nuclear liability policies, acting on behalf of its member companies, notified the NRC that it will be increasing 'its maximum available primary nuclear liability limit from $450 million to $500 million, effective on January 1, 2024' (ADAMS accession No. ML23212A986)."
The letter from ANI gives no explanation of how they decided this limit, but it doesn't sound like it was up to the NRC.
Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act is quite clear. It's the NRC that decides what the primary liability limit is. The source for the 10-15B availability is the World Nuclear Association
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/liability-for-nuclear-damage
Thank you for providing the source. It also says that covering those amounts would require a tighter definition of nuclear damage and a shorter limitation on claims, and could not comply with existing international conventions. Those seem difficult to arrange, but not impossible.
Absolutely, we must have a far tighter definition of damages.The current US tort system is totally uninsurable. The UCert Manual spends some 20 pages describing a compensation system that would work.