Fission plant insurance premium value 19.5 billion euros PER YEAR PER PLANT

The German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) has presented a study involving possible costs in the event that Germany abandons the use of nuclear energy.

While the nuclear power plant operators in Germany collect the profits, consumers and the government would be required to foot the bill in the case of loss. The study shows how expensive nuclear power would have to become if instances of damage were adequately insured.

The Japanese nuclear power disaster at Fukushima has put the question about the costs of nuclear back on the agenda. While profits from the operation of nuclear power stations land in the coffers of the operators – the estimates are €1 million per day, per nuclear power plant – the government and taxpayers are asked to foot the bill in the case of loss.

...According to the calculations, an annual insurance premium in the amount of €19.5 billion would be payable over the entire period for every nuclear power plant, given provision of the entire insured amount after 100 years. Yet in light of the residual terms that continue to apply in Germany, such a period cannot be regarded as realistic. "Shorter periods, however, result in an exponential increase of the payable annual premiums," the study continues. This then results in the determined value of €6,090 billion...

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/true-cost-of-nuclear-examined-in-new-study_100002882/

Ooooof!


Study title: "Calculation of an Adequate Risk Insurance Premium for Covering Third-Party Liability Risks Resulting from the Operation of Nuclear Power Stations"

Prepared by: Leipzig Insurance Forums

Like Oil. How much of our defense budget is used to provide protection for Big Oil to get their product to market? $3-400BB/year? If so, that's a subsidy that needs to be factored in when we evaluate other energy options like renewables and alternative energy.

We can't quantify how much of our defense budget is directly attributable to protecting fossil fuels so that isn't going to happen, a better answer is to get off them so that we have no need to use DoD funds to protect oil. We also can and should eliminate all subsidies they are currently receiving. That battle is underway and will cost the Rs for their opposition to the effort.

There are good reasons to subsidize emerging industries and technologies that we want to grow. Renewable energy, electric vehicles and advanced batteries are the types of industries where the output is a commodity that will respond to early subsidies with significant price reductions as the technology matures.

Nuclear is about as bad as it gets though. It is a mature industry where as we learn more, the price rises instead of declines. It is a tech that has a requirement for fuel which we are not self-sufficient in, so future "uranium wars" are predictable should we increase our dependence on it. Finally instead of delivering public benefit for the subsidies received, as can be seen by the OP, the real outcome is a market distortion of the price of safety - an area that not only costs in money, but when the bill comes due it will be paid in human misery. It the actual cost of risk becomes part of the competitive landscape it will hasten the transition to renewable energy and move us away from fossil fuels as rapidly as it can happen.

that factored it in at a cost of about $11 a gallon, if relevant miltiary funding came out of gas prices, instead of the federal budget/DOD.

I'll try and find it.

There is a limit to how we assign the costs of a problem to the agency that is responsible. The defense dollars are an approximation where cause/effect is going to vary wildly by the assumptions used.

You saw a similar problem emerge in the BP oil spill where views of causal links to damages were wildly divergent.

With the nuclear plant failures we would have little trouble assigning responsibility for having to abandon 800km^2 including the NW part of NYC. There might be a lot of wrangling over the actual value of losses, but making an area uninhabitable is unarguably a result of NPP failure.