Looking at the security track record for products of companies that now talk about building nuclear power plants I hope that at least a few governments pay attention and make sure that they'll be held 100% liable in case of any accidents.
I'd be pissed having to pay with tax money only because some billionaire skimped on security measures to save a couple $$, ending up radiating a few neighbourhoods
@mathias What do you even mean by "100% liable" in this context? For what and how long?
@petrisch I'm not a lawyer but there are various regulations across the world that have the public cover costs to a certain degree. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act for an example.
That's common "privatise profits, socialise costs"
Given that nuclear is quite safe if done responsibly (at least based on statistics looking at deaths/energy production), they should be okay covering any damages. If it were up to me I'd go as far as have them be liable with personal assets
@petrisch See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident#Compensation_and_government_expenses for an example of how much something can cost in case of a disaster - and how much of that was covered by the operator
@mathias No lawyer either. I see price-anderson goes in the direction I was thinking about. Because TEPCO is a state owned company anyway right? No mather what, there is no company paying here. And Fukushima was built in the sixties. In a liberal state where everything is supposed to be in private hands thats a very long time. Usually private companies should be able to go out of business. So are they building approvable reserves like banks do nowadays? Anyways the consequences can be so big...
@mathias absolutely agree. I would even go further in this case, that no company can give such a longterm liability by any means. Its the wrong construct.
@petrisch if the company ceases to exist that's one thing. If the company announces record profits while receiving subsidiaries or other state funded support that's another. but Lots of nuance and details here that's not really fitting the communication medium here
Overall my point was that I struggle trusting companies who have a known record of putting profits over security in their software to play with radioactive material