By Jonathan
Tirone December 10, 2014
If you wrap
your new car around a tree beside the interstate, the U.S. government values
your life at $9 million. If you’re at risk from a nuclear accident, you’re
priced at just $3 million.
Those are the
figures the U.S. Transportation Department and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission use when considering safety upgrades for highways or nuclear power
plants. Their methods compare the cost of improvements with the number of lives
potentially saved. The gap between the value they give to each life shows the
scale of the task facing officials trying to broker a deal to improve nuclear
safety around the world.
The NRC has
been reviewing its statistical model since August 2012 as the European Union
heaps pressure on the U.S. to agree to tighter regulations on reactor safety.
The theoretical value of a human life is a key part of the U.S. rulebook, which
effectively caps how much power companies can be forced to spend on safety
upgrades.
“Using this low
value has a significant effect on nuclear plant license renewals and new
reactor approvals,” said Ed Lyman, a Washington-based physicist at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. “Nuclear plants are not required to add safety systems
that the NRC deems too expensive for the value of the lives they could save.”
The U.S. was
left as the main dissenter in negotiations over tighter international rules on
nuclear safety this month as Russia scaled back its opposition to plans
intended to avoid a repeat of Japan’s 2011 nuclear-plant meltdown at Fukishima.
The NRC hasn’t
determined whether to revise the figure, spokesman Scott Burnell said in an
e-mailed reply to questions.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
The NRC’s lower
value on American lives means that regulators have struggled to force nuclear
operators to invest in safety infrastructure at plants under license. The U.S.
is against a proposed European amendment to the Convention on Nuclear Safety
forcing regulators to show how they’re improving safety and mitigating against
accidents.
“The nuclear
industry complained about the number of changes they had to make,” former NRC
commissioner Victor Gilinsky said in an e-mail response to questions. Rules now
require “a cost-benefit analysis to justify any NRC action,” he said.
A higher value
placed on human lives, like the one the Department of Transportation uses,
could change NRC risk assessments, which consider the consequences of a
potential accident along with their probabilities, said Lyman. A Department of
Transportation public-information official declined to comment on the
disparity.
Industry Response
“The NRC does
focus on the quantitative factors in reaching many of these decisions,”
Chairman Allison Macfarlane said in Dec. 3 Senate testimony. “Some of the
quantitative factors that are considered are themselves not necessarily fully
quantitative like the price of -- the cost of a human life.”
The U.S.
Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington-based advocacy group promoting more
atomic power, has criticized regulators for imposing onerous requirements.
“Resources are
being spent complying with requirements that have little or no safety benefit,”
said NEI senior vice president Anthony Pietrangelo at the same Dec. 3 hearing.
“If the NRC more accurately estimated the cost of its regulatory requirements
it would find that many of its requirements do not pass a simple cost-benefit
test.”
While U.S.
nuclear operators have set up regional emergency-response centers and invested
in safety equipment, their French counterparts are spending four times more,
according to industry estimates.
No comments:
Post a Comment