9 ms·

Insured by whom? You need to understand how insurance companies operate: They gather data, they calculate the risk vs. the cost of paying out, they add a markup

Insured by whom? You need to understand how insurance companies operate: They gather data, they calculate the risk vs. the cost of paying out, they add a markup - that's your price. There is not enough data to do this with catastrophic nuclear accidents.

ThomPete 7y ago
I understand how they work and I have done work both for insurance companies and re-insurers, nuclear power plants are insured a little different. Here are some facts on how it works. "Currently, owners of nuclear power plants pay premiums for $375 million in private liability coverage for each nuclear reactor they own. If there is an incident at a nuclear plant, and the $375 million in coverage is not sufficient, the owner’s coverage is supplemented by the second layer of protection, which is supplied by the nuclear power industry as a whole. Under the Price-Anderson Act, all reactor owners are committed to paying their share of any damages that exceed the incident reactor owner’s first-tier limit of $375 million—up to $111.9 million per reactor. Since are currently 104 reactors in operation, the amount that would be available in the industry pool to pay claims totals $12.6 billion (2011). " It works because nuclear accidents are extremely rare and less dangerous than wind and solar let alone coal, oil and gas. https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accidents https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accid...
- jdjdjjsjs 7y ago
  Wait...nuclear accidents (e.g.s Chernobyl and Fukushima) are less dangerous than wind and solar? What sort of blatant BS is this.
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    I didn't say that. I said that nuclear power is safer than wind and solar and any other form of energy EVEN including Chernobyl and Fukushima.
- the_why_of_y 7y ago
  Thanks, this reminds me that I read this article half a year ago and forgot... my point is that it's not sufficient as the Fukushima Daiichi accident cost a lot more than $12.6 billion, let me just lazily link to my old comment on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    But what's the point though? Three Mile Island was fully paid by the insurance. With regards to Fukushima the powerplant didn't kill anyone, the tsunami, on the other hand, did and of course, the public needs to pay for as it was force majure not the actual nuclear power plant that created the disaster. And Tjernobyl was in a country which didn't have any private ownership so of course the public paid for it. What other cases can you come up with where insurance didn't cover it? It's pretty important to get things into proper perspectives here.
- whalebird 7y ago
  This isn't an insurance against catastrophic failure on the order of Fukushima or Chernobyl, which run into the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. Of course you can have an insurance pool that covers arbitrarily small sums at arbitrarily low fees. That's missing the point.
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    Well you asked and I answered. In the case of Three Mile Island it was enough to pay. "Of course, it is which is why there are two tiers. The other one paid by the whole industry. But it's an absurd objection to begin with. All sources of energy have financial consequences if they go wrong, we use them anyway because the value they provide to society vastly outperform occasional disasters. And when it comes to human life, nuclear is far the safest, far safer than wind and solar. " It's still not an argument against the safest and cleanest form of energy we have.
    - whalebird 7y ago
      > All sources of energy have financial consequences if they go wrong, we use them anyway because the value they provide to society vastly outperform occasional disasters. All energy sources aren't equal though. The value to society is cost/risk vs benefit. We're looking for the best deal here. The "catastrophic failure" scenario of wind energy is obviously completely different from that of nuclear power plants. That's a cost that's very difficult to estimate, but it is significant. You can't just ignore it. > It's still not an argument against the safest and cleanest form of energy we have. The fact that there's unfunded potential liabilities of enormous extent is an argument against nuclear energy. I'm not against nuclear energy at all, but let's be real here.
      - ThomPete 7y ago
        The energy wind and solar provides are also completely different. Capacity factor between 20-40 for wind and solar and 90 for nuclear. They provide less than 1% of the global energy and they don't have any other usage than providing energy plus the are unreliable and requires backup from other sources such as nuclear, oil, gas and coal. I am not ignoring anything I am simply pointing to the fact that when we talk wind and solar the true cost isn't calculated whereas with nuclear it is. And with regards to the insurance of catastrophes then Three Mile Island was paid by the insurance. Fukushima disaster happened not because of the nuclear powerplant but because of a tsunami, it was also the tsunami not Fukushima that killed thousands of people and Tjernobyl was owned and operated by the state so who else should pay for it? So yes let's be real. No powerplant in the western world has yet cost taxpayers anything that wasn't covered by insurance and it has provided unparalleled clean energy which at least those who claim to worry about climate change as the biggest threat to humanity should support.

ThomPete 7y ago

I understand how they work and I have done work both for insurance companies and re-insurers, nuclear power plants are insured a little different. Here are some facts on how it works. "Currently, owners of nuclear power plants pay premiums for $375 million in private liability coverage for each nuclear reactor they own. If there is an incident at a nuclear plant, and the $375 million in coverage is not sufficient, the owner’s coverage is supplemented by the second layer of protection, which is supplied by the nuclear power industry as a whole. Under the Price-Anderson Act, all reactor owners are committed to paying their share of any damages that exceed the incident reactor owner’s first-tier limit of $375 million—up to $111.9 million per reactor. Since are currently 104 reactors in operation, the amount that would be available in the industry pool to pay claims totals $12.6 billion (2011). " It works because nuclear accidents are extremely rare and less dangerous than wind and solar let alone coal, oil and gas. https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accidents https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accid...

jdjdjjsjs 7y ago
Wait...nuclear accidents (e.g.s Chernobyl and Fukushima) are less dangerous than wind and solar? What sort of blatant BS is this.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  I didn't say that. I said that nuclear power is safer than wind and solar and any other form of energy EVEN including Chernobyl and Fukushima.
the_why_of_y 7y ago
Thanks, this reminds me that I read this article half a year ago and forgot... my point is that it's not sufficient as the Fukushima Daiichi accident cost a lot more than $12.6 billion, let me just lazily link to my old comment on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159
- ThomPete 7y ago
  But what's the point though? Three Mile Island was fully paid by the insurance. With regards to Fukushima the powerplant didn't kill anyone, the tsunami, on the other hand, did and of course, the public needs to pay for as it was force majure not the actual nuclear power plant that created the disaster. And Tjernobyl was in a country which didn't have any private ownership so of course the public paid for it. What other cases can you come up with where insurance didn't cover it? It's pretty important to get things into proper perspectives here.
whalebird 7y ago
This isn't an insurance against catastrophic failure on the order of Fukushima or Chernobyl, which run into the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. Of course you can have an insurance pool that covers arbitrarily small sums at arbitrarily low fees. That's missing the point.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  Well you asked and I answered. In the case of Three Mile Island it was enough to pay. "Of course, it is which is why there are two tiers. The other one paid by the whole industry. But it's an absurd objection to begin with. All sources of energy have financial consequences if they go wrong, we use them anyway because the value they provide to society vastly outperform occasional disasters. And when it comes to human life, nuclear is far the safest, far safer than wind and solar. " It's still not an argument against the safest and cleanest form of energy we have.
  - whalebird 7y ago
    > All sources of energy have financial consequences if they go wrong, we use them anyway because the value they provide to society vastly outperform occasional disasters. All energy sources aren't equal though. The value to society is cost/risk vs benefit. We're looking for the best deal here. The "catastrophic failure" scenario of wind energy is obviously completely different from that of nuclear power plants. That's a cost that's very difficult to estimate, but it is significant. You can't just ignore it. > It's still not an argument against the safest and cleanest form of energy we have. The fact that there's unfunded potential liabilities of enormous extent is an argument against nuclear energy. I'm not against nuclear energy at all, but let's be real here.
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      The energy wind and solar provides are also completely different. Capacity factor between 20-40 for wind and solar and 90 for nuclear. They provide less than 1% of the global energy and they don't have any other usage than providing energy plus the are unreliable and requires backup from other sources such as nuclear, oil, gas and coal. I am not ignoring anything I am simply pointing to the fact that when we talk wind and solar the true cost isn't calculated whereas with nuclear it is. And with regards to the insurance of catastrophes then Three Mile Island was paid by the insurance. Fukushima disaster happened not because of the nuclear powerplant but because of a tsunami, it was also the tsunami not Fukushima that killed thousands of people and Tjernobyl was owned and operated by the state so who else should pay for it? So yes let's be real. No powerplant in the western world has yet cost taxpayers anything that wasn't covered by insurance and it has provided unparalleled clean energy which at least those who claim to worry about climate change as the biggest threat to humanity should support.