[cdn-nucl-l] Price-Anderson Act renewal

[Adam McLean <adam.mclean@utoronto.ca>]

Posted in The Nation, November 26, 2001 and at:
http://www.thenation.com//doc.mhtml?i=special&s=bivens20011126
How can a paper editor consider himself expert enough to claim the Pebble Bed 
Modular Reactor is "a most terrorist-friendly power plant"?

Adam

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Who Pays for Nuclear Power?
by Matt Bivens

Matt Bivens, a former editor of the Moscow Times who now lives in Maryland, 
reported from Russia for nine years for publications ranging from the Los 
Angeles Times to Harper’s Magazine.  

Congress is pondering ways to shore up security and safety at the nation's 
nuclear power plants, from stockpiling medicines for radiation poisioning to 
expanding emergency evacuation plans. But the dark horse coming up fast is 
something else: an industry-favored piece of legislation that, in the 
unfortunate event of a nuclear catastrophe, makes damn sure that someone else 
foots the cost. 

PETITION CONGRESS  
The Price Anderson Act has discouraged the development of safer, less costly 
sources of energy than nuclear power. Join your voice to those calling for 
Congress to not renew its status by signing this online petition. 
 
When it comes to improving security, the industry's critics are active. 
Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey has introduced a bill in the House to 
create potassium iodide stockpiles near nuclear power plants. Potassium iodide 
was administered in 1986 to Soviet children who were near the Chernobyl 
disaster, and is credited with preventing thousands of thyroid cancers among 
them. "Potassium iodide is to radiation exposure what Cipro is to anthrax," 
Markey said in a statement. 

New York Senator Hillary Clinton also has called for potassium iodide 
stockpiles, along with a plan to evacuate New York City should anything--
terrorist-sponsored or otherwise--go wrong at the Indian Point nuclear power 
plant, just 40 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan. Clinton and her 
Democratic colleague from Nevada, Harry Reid, also favor legislation to 
federalize nuclear plant security, a la the airports. 

But talk is cheap, and the action will start Tuesday, November 27, on the House 
Floor. Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin has scheduled a vote on HR 2983, a 
bill to renew the Price-Anderson Act, a 1950s-era insurance subsidy for the 
nuclear power industry that expires next summer. Tauzin's Commerce Committee 
tentatively approved the bill in a debate-free Halloween-day voice vote; on 
Tuesday, the bill will come before the full House for an up-down vote, under 
rules limiting debate and prohibiting amendments. 

"Well, now isn't this just like the nuclear industry and its allies, bringing 
us a real turkey for Thanksgiving?" complains a statement by Public Citizen, 
the consumer advocacy group. "Attaching a controversial piece of legislation to 
unrelated legislation, just after a major national holiday, without debate, 
about limiting industry liability on hundreds of nuclear reactors after the 
September 11th tragedy?" 

Insurers are pros at assessing risk; when the federal government started 
talking up civilian nuclear power plants in the 1950s, insurers assessed the 
risks and ran for cover. Enter the 1957 Price-Anderson act, which today limits 
the nuclear industry's collective liability for any mishaps to a ballpark of 
about $12 billion. For comparison, estimates of the costs of Chernobyl run to 
about thirty times that; while a 1982 study by the Sandia National Laboratories 
suggested the cost of a major US nuclear accident would run to more than forty 
times the industry's current liability cap (in today's dollars). That's to say 
nothing of the human costs in immediate deaths and long-term cancers. 

What happens if HR 2983 is voted down, and Price-Anderson not renewed? Most 
likely, no new nuclear power plants would be built. As even Vice President Dick 
Cheney has conceded, without Price-Anderson's security, "Nobody's going to 
invest in nuclear power." Voting down HR 2983 would in particular drive a stake 
through the heart of projects like the new-fangled Pebble Bed Modular Reactor--
a most terrorist-friendly power plant, because its designs don't include a 
concrete containment building around the reactor. 

But with or without HR 2983, existing nuclear plants keep their insurance 
breaks--and, no doubt, industry spokespeople will continue to boast that 
taxpayer-subsidized nuclear power is "cheap." Congress could, of course, revoke 
those protections, and force the industry to buy its own insurance--i.e., to 
pay its own way. But no one in Congress is seriouly discussing such radical 
free-market shock therapy.