When the damning report of incompetence and cover-ups come out the tendency of those in power to blame fall guys, backpedal furiously and dodge responsibility!

a corporation is in a position to make significant profits by putting the public’s lives and property at risk while knowing that should an accident happen it will not bear anything remotely resembling the real costs. Given such a situation, accidents are absolutely inevitable.

In every case the root cause of the accident was a company taking excess risk in order to increase profits. If done safely nuclear power is inherently far too expensive to use. Only by cutting corners (by running the cables for all 5 SUPPOSEDLY “redundant” control systems thru the SAME small space so one small fire could knock them ALL out in Brown’s Ferry; in Fukushima, by putting the spent fuel storage in the MOST UNSAFE LOCATION POSSIBLE: DIRECTLY ABOVE THE REACTOR (because it saves a bit of time in refueling; always the story is the same: cutting corners in a manner that is blatantly fragrantly unsafe in order to save costs.

In the words of Walk Kelly “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

No corporation would build a power plant without a government subsidizing or “excusing” it from costs of accidents. Government insulation against liability costs ensures that corporations can make excess profits by taking unreasonable risks which they would never incur if they knew they would be responsible for costs.

So the hard reality is that nuclear power is totally uneconomic and only reason its done is because governments support it by insulating companies from responsibility for damages.

When it IS done, because of subsidies it is INHERENTLY and INESCAPABLY unsafe. Clearly the ONLY reason corporations are interested is because they know that they can profit from taking unreasonable risks. (The PROOF of that is that they will not do it without subsidies.)

Why would a subsidy make any difference if they REALLY believed it was safe?

Governments want nuclear power plants because its far cheaper to extract bomb grade material (chemically) from spent fuel from nuclear power plants than to get it directly from ore, thru the fiendishly expensive ulta-centrafuge process.

So the very real risks and very high costs of nuclear power are just citizens being tricked into paying a lot more money for grossly excessive bomb capacity than they would be willing to pay if they knew how much money was really going to that end.

For full information go to
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/

For instance, nuclear reactors are expensive. Therefore only big & rich organizations can afford to build them. The big & rich organizations like to speak to decision makers & regulators, winning favors, special exemptions, preferential loan conditions, regulatory easements, and all the rest. In short powerful people like to do deals with other powerful people.

One can easily imagine a prototypical conversation. “Hey, c’mon, we know the regulation says the physical plant has to withstand a 10 metre wave. But we already built to a 7 m standard and upgrading will cost us a fortune! And really, we all know the 10 m wave isn’t gonna happen. Besides, the next major plant reno, we promise to upgrade to that 10 m standard.”

Not saying it happened like that. But it sounds like something that could happen, somewhere, sometime.

Every culture has traits that work well in some cases but not in others – in nuclear, a little bit of a “questioning attitude” is a good thing.

FYI: If you would like an easy-to-read look at daily life in a US nuclear plant, and what a bad day might be like, my novel “Rad Decision” tells the story in a way that allows a lay person to follow along and understand what the real problems were. The book is free online (no advertisements or sponsors) – just Google the title or go to my homepage. I’ve been working away at atomic plants for some years now and can provide a rare insider’s viewpoint. As a bonus, the plant design and bad day resemble Fukushima (though it was written beforehand.) Rad Decision has garnered a lot of positive reviews from readers but little attention from the media – they’re busy, I guess.