**Breaking*** Document found in Afghanistan confirms airline attack on nuclear power plant

But, you could end up with a situation similar to the fossil reactors discovered in Gabon. There are several at These operated off and on for millions of years in earlier geologic epochs, owing to the higher natural abundance of 235U in those earlier ages. The uranium in those formations underwent fission and, horror of horrors, actually produced fission products in water-bearing strata. Now, did the continent of Africa become a barren, radioactive wasteland as a result of the release of these uncontained, unregulated fission products? Hardly.

I digress again. Could this expain the evolutionary jump genetically to modern man and the lack of the missing link?

Food for thought.

Cow chips. If anything, the liability limits are unrealistically high. LWR technology results in very low probability for maximum credible accidents. Even if the worst happens, you'd get some local damage, in and around the plant site, but unless the media and anti-nuke kooks start stirring up and panicking the sheeple, large-scale effects are unlikely to approach the limits of P-A liability.

Cow chips right back atcha. If that were true, there would be no need for a liability cap. For those who aren't aware, P-A caps liability at approximately $9.5 billion -- which is ridiculously low in case of a major accident. I agree that such an accident is extremely unlikely -- but given that this is true, then the premiums for the necessary coverage would be equally low. P-A was enacted in the 1950s, as a subsidy for an experimental, uncertain technology. That technology is no longer uncertainty; it is mature and fully integrated into the market. There is no longer any possible justification for a government handout like P-A -- especially in an industry (electricity generation) that generally enjoys a guaranteed profit margin.

What are you saying is paid at pennies on the dollar? The insurance premiums? Sure, and if you know anything about insurance you will know that this is the case for any kind of liability coverage. I just renewed my automobile insurance. In my state, for the kind of cars I drive, the rates were in the couple of hundred dollar range for coverages ranging into the hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability. IOW, a penny or two on the dollar. Why? Well, its just the way liability insurance works. Check it out, if you are old enough to have to pay your way on any kind of liability insurance, and the idea of pooling coverage and spreading risk. Its a neat idea, and one of the positive outcomes of capitalism and free markets. Its just amazing...

Nope. I'm talking about the payout in case of a true disaster. Injured parties will receive literally pennies for every dollar of actual damage they suffer. But thanks for the lecture.

If that were true, there would be no need for a liability cap.

You're really full of those cow chips. Liability caps exist because that is how insurance works. I am really wondering if you are old enough to have to have paid for any kind of insurance policy on your own. If you have, you will know that any kind of policy has liability limits.

Now, I am wondering if you know why that is. Probably not, so I will tell you. Aside from the nuclear industry and banking, insurance is probably the most highly regulated industry. They must prove cash reserves of an amount sufficient to cover claims for casualty losses in any kind of reasonable payout scenario. The only way to assure this is to cap liability at some measurable amount. If you write a policy without a liability limit, you'd have to prove infinite cash reserves. Good luck with that.

So, what do you do? When the Price-Anderson structure was established, the authors of the Act based their model exactly as insurance liability has always been established. Estimate the probability of a casualty loss occurring and the likely liability payouts from that, build in a conservative margin, and establish the limits, allowing for an estimated total liability exposure for the total number of insured. The liability pool size is adjusted based on updated data, the changes in probabilities of various incidents, and changes in estimated values of insured property. This is exactly how it is done for "ordinary" insurance. My homeowners policy was just adjusted at year-end to allow for changes in the property value, so I pay a few dollars more a year in premium.

For those who aren't aware, P-A caps liability at approximately $9.5 billion -- which is ridiculously low in case of a major accident.

Horse chips. Do what I have done. First, start with the typical inventory of fuel in an LWR core. Then, estimate the fission product inventory based on equilibrium core burnup. Then, postulate the maximum credible accident, something like a twin-break LOCA and rapid blowdown and core uncovering. Next, based on reasonable heat transfer models, estimate total release into containment. Then, taking reasonable credit for radionuclide removal by decay, plate-out and wash-out, settling, and filtration, estimate the effluent release. This defines the source term. Next, apply a reasonable dispersion model, which will have in its kernel a decent meteorological model, as well as pathway models for radionuclide transport. Finally, apply this to the likely long-term property losses within the EPZ. You'll find that the liability limits for even the worst-case (facilities with relatively dense developments within their EPZ), are more than adequate.

I agree that such an accident is extremely unlikely -- but given that this is true, then the premiums for the necessary coverage would be equally low. P-A was enacted in the 1950s, as a subsidy for an experimental, uncertain technology. That technology is no longer uncertainty; it is mature and fully integrated into the market. There is no longer any possible justification for a government handout like P-A -- especially in an industry (electricity generation) that generally enjoys a guaranteed profit margin.

Sigh. One more time. P-A is not a government handout. Participants pay their way. In fact, it is one of those rare government programs (aside from confiscatory taxation) that actually makes money for the government. That, IMO, is probably the reason they want to keep it.

Why do you say that? I have presented facts, logic, and reason, along with a rhetorical question, based on your demonstrated lack of understanding of how liability insurance of any kind works, as to whether or not you have ever paid for such a policy. If you consider that a personal attack, heaven help you on FR, because you're obviously to thin-skinned to engage in debate, especially about a technical subject about which you have demonstrated a lack of understanding of the science and technology.

Well, anyway, do you disagree with the methodology I outlined above as to the potential liability in a credible accident scenario? If not, why, and where and how would you change it? Can you identify a particular EPZ wherein potential liability is so high as to require an alternate method? Do you know what an EPZ is? Can you tell the readers of the thread what meteorological conditions result in the maximum case exposure, using appropriate parameters such as adiabatic lapse rate, crosswind direction and speed, and assumptions for spatial dependence of dispersion? What, in your opinion, are the controlling factors for determining the source term? What in-containment design features are most effective in limiting the source term, and under what conditions might these systems be compromised?

IOW, instead of just mindlessly repeating a mantra some anti-nuke kook might have taught you, show us that you have the capability of learning something on your own, and bringing that knowledge to bear on the subject at hand. You still have time to be taken seriously...

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