Monday, April 25, 2011

Too Radioactive To Fail

The Japanese Government is looking out for TEPCO (the utility company with a nuclear reactor problem).

Gov't to help TEPCO pay for nuke crisis damages if survival at risk

TOKYO, April 23, Kyodo

The government is arranging to help Tokyo Electric Power Co. pay for damages incurred from the nuclear accident at its Fukushima Daiichi power plant if it comes to a point where the company's survival is at risk due to ballooning compensation costs, government sources said Saturday.
Which is why in America (too) nuclear utilities are insured by the US Government. I wonder if the Government is too big to fail? The more you try to avoid failure of a system by deceit, lies, coverups, and prevarication the bigger the final failure.

2 comments:

painlord2k@gmail.com said...

A big problem is the rising of compensations out of anything reasonable.
Government insurance is needed mainly because the government made laws allowing people to sue without cause or with very little cause for exorbitant sums and be able to win.

Better be free from government made stupid (I'm repeating myself?) laws and return to common laws.

How much damage is due to the tsunami and how much damage is due to the reactor incident? Do the oil refinery owner pay for the lives of the people killed in the fire after the tsunami? And for the people poisoned by the toxic chemicals burned? If not, why not?

M. Simon said...

Pain,

The problem is a simple one. If there are naturally 100,000 deaths due to natural radiation in an area and an accident causes it to rise to 110,000 all 110,000 will claim to be harmed by the radiation release.

That is just a fact of life.

It ought to be dealt with honestly: plants need to be much safer because in a bad accident it is difficult to determine the cause of injury.

Toxic chemicals are somewhat more specific.