How much would a meltdown cost?

[shawn.patrick stensil]

How much would a meltdown cost?
The Toronto Star
Mon Nov 30 2009
Page: B01
Section: Business
Byline: Tyler Hamilton
Source: Toronto Star

What kind of insurance policy do you take out if you operate a large
nuclear plant in one of the most densely populated, fastest-growing
communities in Canada?

The Harper government believes $650 million should cover it off, even
in the event of a catastrophic, however improbable, accident at a
nuclear plant such as the aging Pickering generating station.
Whether that amount is high enough was the subject of lengthy debate
these past two weeks as legislators took a close look at Bill C-20,
the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act.

The bill raises the cap on liability to $650 million from the $75
million limit established in 1976. It represents a nearly ninefold
increase that the federal government calls "reasonable" and in line
with international standards, given the extremely low likelihood of a
severe accident. But critics of the bill say the government is still
lowballing the cost of potential damages and is out of touch with
other nuclear-power nations that measure liability in the billions,
not millions of dollars.

"Under any scenario of a major nuclear accident happening within
Canadian nuclear facilities, you can crack through $650 million
without breaking a sweat, " said B.C. MP Nathan Cullen, the New
Democrat for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, who's on the parliamentary
committee combing through the bill. The difference between a $650
million event and a multibillion-dollar catastrophe, he said, can be
determined by the direction and speed of the wind that carries the
radiation.

Cullen, speaking later in an interview, said it would be a mistake to
dismiss these concerns as fear mongering. "Everybody seems to be so
shy of mentioning those words, 'nuclear accident.' But we have to
imagine it, unfortunately."

He said citizens of Pickering and Toronto should be following the
issue more closely, with four reactors at the Pickering B nuclear
station soon to reach the end of their safe operating lives. Ontario
Power Generation is to decide by year's end whether to refurbish the
four to extend their operation to 2060.

Alternatively, OPG may seek a short-term life extension as part of a
strategy for "maximizing asset value" - similar to the five-year life
extension given to Atomic Energy of Canada's NRU isotope-producing
reactor in Chalk River.

The NRU reactor was supposed to cease operating by the end of 2005 but
its licence was extended to 2011. A heavy water leak forced the
reactor to shut down in May 2009 for repairs. Six months later Atomic
Energy scientists are still working on a fix.

In the United States, liability for nuclear accidents is set at $10
billion (U.S.), while in Japan the cap will be doubled next year to
roughly $1.47 billion (Canadian). In Germany, there is no cap on
nuclear liability but an operator must be able to cover at least $4
billion.

Cullen was surprised to learn last week that the liability ceiling in
the current bill was determined as far back as 2002 by the previous
Liberal government and has not been updated since. In 2003, Natural
Resources Canada commissioned Magellan Engineering and International
Safety Research to study whether the $650 million limit was
appropriate.

The study, submitted May 2003, concluded the proposed cap was
sufficient for "design-basis accidents" - that is, foreseeable
accidents that a nuclear plant is designed to accommodate. But the
report, which focused only on Ontario's Darlington station and
Quebec's Gentilly-2 station, warned health-cost components are "very
sensitive to population density."

It recommended that the Canadian government commission another study
to look at "severe accidents" at the Pickering station "to estimate
the impact of the much higher population density and land use around
the station."

Cullen asked Dave McCauley, director of the uranium and radioactive
waste division at the natural resources department, whether the
ministry ever commissioned that follow-up study to look more closely
at the Pickering plant.

"No we didn't," replied McCauley. "I think that the philosophy was
that the limit would be addressing foreseeable risks associated with
design-basis accidents as opposed to severe or catastrophic risks."
McCauley went on to explain that the nuclear liability act is meant to
cover all kinds of nuclear accidents, but that, when it comes to
liability limits, it drew the line on "foreseeable" events. In other
testimony, nuclear industry officials explained that the cap keeps the
cost of liability insurance affordable.

Albert Sweetnam, executive vice-president of new nuclear builds at
Ontario Power Generation, told the committee that containing liability
for the nuclear industry is the nature of the beast. "The capacity of
utilities and insurance companies are not unlimited so, at some level,
all countries provide backstops in some ways."

It's absolutely essential, said Peter Mason, president and chief
executive of nuclear supplier GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada. "If
there was not a cap and if there was not suitable legislation
insurance in place, then we wouldn't be in the nuclear industry," he
explained to the committee.
Research commissioned in 2007 by Defence Research and Development
Canada, an arm of the Department of Defence, suggests the cost of a
severe nuclear accident, one that releases the radioactive isotope
Cesium-137 and results in wide contamination, would be much higher
than $650 million.

The research looked at the impact of a relatively small dirty bomb
going off in downtown Toronto. It estimated that cleaning up the
contamination using the most stringent standards could cost up to $250
billion, and that the economic toll could reach $23.5 billion as
anxiety-stricken Torontonians skipped work and flooded medical
facilities.

"The amount of radiation assumed for that study is one two-thousandth
part of the inventory of the same radioactive isotope in the reactor
core of an existing Candu nuclear power plant," Gordon Thompson,
executive director of the Institute for Resource and Securities
Studies in Cambridge Mass., testified to the committee on Nov. 16.

Michael Binder, president of the Canadian Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, called the dirty-bomb scenario in the defence department
study "junk science," even though his own agency is cited as a
"federal partner" in the research effort and the study's main authors
were scientists from prestigious Battelle Memorial Institute in the
U.S.

An MP on the committee, Mike Allen, the New Brunswick Conservative for
Tobique-Mactaquac, took issue with Cullen's line of questioning. "What
Mr. Cullen is talking about is some hairy-fairy idea that is a
theoretical concept and it's really not reality, given our 63-year
history (of safe nuclear operation)," he said.

Cullen, in an interview, said that is why we have insurance, to cover
the cost of something bad happening that has never happened before.
"Isn't the nature of accidents that they are sometimes unforeseeable,
that they happen in such a way that if they had been foreseen, they
wouldn't happen?"
nce," even though his own agency is cited as a "federal partner" in
the research effort and the study's main authors were scientists from
prestigious Battelle Memorial Institute in the U.S.

An MP on the committee, Mike Allen, the New Brunswick Conservative for
Tobique-Mactaquac, took issue with Cullen's line of questioning. "What
Mr. Cullen is talking about is some hairy-fairy idea that is a
theoretical concept and it's really not reality, given our 63-year
history (of safe nuclear operation)," he said.

Cullen, in an interview, said that is why we have insurance, to cover
the cost of something bad happening that has never happened before.
"Isn't the nature of accidents that they are sometimes unforeseeable,
that they happen in such a way that if they had been foreseen, they
wouldn't happen?"

[Boyd Reimer]

Why is it that every other business has to pay for 100% of their own
insurance except the nuclear power industry?

Bill C-20 is essentially forcing us taxpayers to cover most of the
insurance costs (by far!) of the private, profit-making nuclear power
business.

If private nuclear power corporations want to profit from risk, then
they should be the ones paying for that risk--not us taxpayers.

That business threatens the lives and the health of thousands of
future generations.

In that sense, Bill C-20 is not only robbery of the public purse, but
also insanity.

The quote from CEO Peter Mason exactly summed up the situation: "If

there was not a cap and if there was not suitable legislation
insurance in place, then we wouldn't be in the nuclear industry,"

I agree. Therefore let's get our energy from alternative sources that
won't threaten the lives and the health of thousands of future
generations.

In doing so, we will finally become sane.

Sincerely
Boyd Reimer

On Nov 30, 9:42 am, "shawn.patrick stensil"