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[[File:View of Chernobyl taken from Pripyat.JPG|thumb|The abandoned city of [[Prypiat, Ukraine]], following the [[Chernobyl disaster]]. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.]]
The '''nuclear power debate''' is about the controversy<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1086/410301 |author=MacKenzie, James J. |title=Review of The Nuclear Power Controversy] by [[Arthur W. Murphy]] |journal=The Quarterly Review of Biology |volume=52 |issue=4 |pages=467–8 |date=December 1977 |
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/opinion/l29herbert.html Nuclear Energy: The Safety Issues]</ref> which has surrounded the deployment and use of [[nuclear reactor|nuclear fission reactors]] to generate [[electricity]] from [[nuclear fuel]] for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies", in some countries.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1017/S000712340000380X |author=Kitschelt, Herbert P. |title=Political Opportunity and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies |journal=British Journal of Political Science |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=57 |year=1986 |url=http://www.marcuse.org/harold/hmimages/seabrook/861KitscheltAntiNuclear4Democracies.pdf |format=PDF}}</ref><ref>[[Jim Falk]] (1982). ''Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power'', Oxford University Press.</ref>
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==== Indirect Nuclear Insurance Subsidy ====
The potential liability from a [[nuclear accident]]/terrorist attack/natural disaster is so great that is perceived that no nuclear power plant could be built if the owner had to pay for the full cost of [[liability insurance]]. Currently in the U.S. the liability is limited on liability for nuclear power plants under the [[Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act|Price-Anderson Act]] (PAA). As former U.S. Vice-President [[Dick Cheney]] made clear when he was asked in 2001 whether the PAA should be renewed; he responded that without the PAA “nobody's going to invest in nuclear power plants”.<ref>Reuters, 2001. “Cheney says push needed to boost nuclear power”, Reuters News Service, May 15, 2001.[http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2001nn/0105nn/010516nn.htm#190]</ref> The [[U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission]] (USNRC) concluded the liability limits provided by nuclear insurance were significant as to constitute a subsidy, but a quantification of the amount was not attempted at that time.<ref>United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1983. The Price-Anderson Act: the Third Decade, NUREG-0957</ref> Shortly after this in 1990, Dubin and Rothwell were the first to estimate the value to the U.S. nuclear industry of the limitation on liability for nuclear power plants under the Price Anderson Act. Their underlying method was to extrapolate the premiums operators currently pay versus the full liability they would have to pay for full insurance in the absence of the PAA limits. The size of the estimated subsidy per reactor per year was $60 million prior to the 1982 amendments, and up to $22 million following the 1988 amendments.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Dubin J. A., Rothwell G. S. | year = 1990 | title = Subsidy to Nuclear-Power through Price-Anderson Liability Limit | url = | journal = Contemporary Policy Issues | volume = 8 | issue = 3| pages = 73–79 | doi = 10.1111/j.1465-7287.1990.tb00645.x }}</ref> In a separate article in 2003, Anthony Heyes updates the 1988 estimate of $22 million per year to $33 million (2001 dollars).<ref>{{cite journal | author = Heyes A | year = 2003 | title = Determining the Price of Price-Anderson | url = | journal = Regulation | volume = 25 | issue = 4| pages = 105–110 }}</ref>
In case of a nuclear accident, should claims exceed this primary liability, the PAA requires all licensees to additionally provide a maximum of $95.8 million into the accident pool - totaling roughly $10 billion if all reactors were required to pay the maximum. This is still not sufficient in the case of a serious accident, as the cost of damages could exceed the $10 billion.<ref>U.S. Department of Energy. 1999. Department of Energy Report to Congress on the Price-Anderson Act, Prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of General Council. Accessed 20 August 2010. Available: http://www.gc.energy.gov/documents/paa-rep.pdf</ref><ref>Reuters, 2001. “Cheney says push needed to boost nuclear power”, ''Reuters News Service'', May 15, 2001.[http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2001nn/0105nn/010516nn.htm#190]</ref><ref>Bradford, P. A. 2002. Renewal of the Price Anderson Act, Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety, January 23, 2002.</ref> According to the PAA, should the costs of accident damages exceed the $10 billion pool, the remainder of the costs would be fully covered by the [[U.S. Government]]. In 1982, a [[Sandia National Laboratories]] study concluded that depending on the reactor size and 'unfavorable conditions' a serious nuclear accident could lead to property damages as high as $314 billion while fatalities could reach 50,000.<ref>Wood, W.C. 1983. Nuclear Safety; Risks and Regulation. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. pp. 40-48.</ref> A recent study found that if only this one relatively ignored indirect subsidy for nuclear power was converted to a direct subsidy and diverted to [[photovoltaic]] manufacturing, it would result in more installed power and more energy produced by mid-century compared to the nuclear case.<ref>I. Zelenika-Zovko and J.M. Pearce, “Diverting Indirect Subsidies from the Nuclear Industry to the Photovoltaic Industry: Energy and Economic Returns”, ''Energy Policy'' (in press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2011.02.031</ref> This would, of course, require direct spending, rather than potential spending in the case of an accident, significantly increasing the federal budget. This report indicates that the nuclear insurance subsidy is substantial, but there have been no recent studies to re-evaluate the value of the subsidy in light of the recent events in Japan, which may require an expensive clean-up.
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|author= David Bodansky
|publisher= [[American Physical Society]]
|archiveurl= http://web.archive.org/web/20080127135930/http://units.aps.org/units/fps/energy/bodansky.cfm <!-- Bot retrieved archive -->|archivedate=2008-01-27|quote= (reprinted from ''Environmental Practice'', vol. 3, no. 2 (June 2001), pp.86–88
| accessdate= 2008-01-31
| unused_data= Oxford University Press)) }}</ref><ref>{{cite web
| url= http://russp.org/nucfacts.html
| title= Some Amazing Facts about Nuclear Power
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== Plants in adjacent nations ==
The limited liability for the owner of a nuclear power plant in case of a nuclear accident differs per nation while nuclear installations are sometimes built close to national borders.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Schwartz J |title=Emergency preparedness and response: compensating victims of a nuclear accident |journal=J. Hazard. Mater. |volume=111 |issue=
==Future of the nuclear industry==
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