Nuclear power and waste disposal will burden taxpayers for millennia

There is a simple solution to the nuclear power industry: repeal the laws that limit the financial and moral responsibility of the owners (the shareholders) of such industries, and allow a true ‘free-market’ to assess their investment potential.

If the TEPCO shareholders that own the Fukushima reactors knew that they would be held responsible for the possible cost of rectification and for compensation, instead of these costs being socialised, they would not have been so willing to invest. Instead, the TEPCO shareholders responsibilities are passed on to the Japanese people through their government, which has paid out $11 billion for compensation and clean-up, and are facing requests for another $8.7 billion, and, no doubt, there will be massive on-going costs.

This is a great weakness of our economic system: because the investors are legally protected from the consequences of their investment those risks are not taken into account when potential investments are evaluated, so we don’t get a true ‘free-market’ assessment of the investments – the market is skewed. Would the Bhopal accident have occurred if Union Carbide’s investors knew they would be held truly responsible for the possible consequences?

If all business and industrial activity, including nuclear power, was exposed to a true and honest test of its financial viability with full responsibility carried by the investors, the Earth would be a very different place.

No amount of less government is going to fix that.

The “free” market just has the rich getting richer and the middle getting poorer. The lack of responsibility still gets dropped for future generations to deal with.

Read more at:
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2012/06/13/3523494.htm