Why do nuclear facilities take so many risks?
Yet another nuclear disaster in France following a string of errors in numerous countries. When will it end?
Nuclear fission only operates because government underwrites the risk, the costs of decommissioning and, the costs of operation. Absent this Soviet style market intervention/central economic planning, the insurance premiums and operational costs would be so high that it would be impossible to attract investment. But we discover in France as we did in Chernobyl and Fukushima that government promises to cover risks cannot be relied upon. These promises are only worth the paper they are not written on. The irony is that we must fill in risk assessments to take children on school trips and farmers must trip over themselves to prove their raw milk safe, whilst the real risks in society are created by government underwriting the hair brain schemes of their corporate buddies.
And as public finances reduce, the risk of more catastrophies will rise.
Absent subsidies for energy producers, consumers would demand products that consume less energy as the real cost of energy is priced into the market. The market would no doubt also create new sources of energy, doing what un-manipulated markets do best, which is to discover the most affordable, productive technology at the lowest possible risk. We do not need a police state to enforce energy efficient appliances, and we certainly do not need nuclear energy. We require that government end their subsidies of the energy producers. It is time that we called for an end to this market manipulation to allow for normal market mechanisms such as price and risk discovery, and for government to give our money back in the form of tax cuts to the general population so that we can direct our own future.
I would choose to burn some of the hundreds of years of coal we have in Wales and Northumberland because we now have the technology to scrub out all the toxins from the smokestacks. I have full confidence that other technologies will be developed long, long before the coal runs out. We can even sequester and filter the CO2 produced and use it to massively boost productivity in greenhouses for our farmers.
But frankly, anything would be better right now, than dangerous nuclear power stations and these horrid nuclear waste recycling centers.