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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ThirdEye who wrote (222309)	1/25/2002 7:41:39 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

But we pick industries that we want to be winners all the time by limiting their liabilities, and protecting them from having to face the Free Market... (unlike what you and I as individuals must face). A good example is the Price Anderson Act of 1954. It caps the liabilities that the nuclear power industry would face in the event of a serious Chernobyl-style meltdown. The utility is on the hook for the first $1 billion... and the taxpayers must pick up the remainder. NRC estimates a breached reactor core could cost $100 - $200 billion in immediate damages, and in the NRC's famous phrase, cause the economic loss of an "area the size of Pennsylvania" for 100,000 or so years. Price Anderson is up for renewal this March... and both major parties are - unfortunately - likely to approve renewal. One would think that after 48 years of taxpayer protection, the nuclear power industry would have been able to design and deploy reactor designs inherently safe enough (and secure enough against external threats) that they could buy their own insurance... just like other industries must do. But, no. It's called "National Industrial Policy", once on the dole... always on the dole, and it's anti-capitalism. The US is no better than Japan, in this regard. As long as the industry is allowed to suckle at the federal teat, they have no economic incentive to innovate safer designs.