Nuclear Reactors and Seismic Activity

I hate pain and suffering. Even when it happens to other people.

The events surrounding the disruption of a nuclear reactor, its backup, and its secondary backup were catastrophic. The reaction to these events seems to be more emotional than sensible. I have been debating with my more worried friends about the policy implications of these events. They seem to think that we should ban nuclear reactors from any area with seismic activity.

Before we consider this, maybe we should make a comparison to an event that is older and look at it with the benefit of hindsight. The Gulf spill last year was horrible. As I understand it this was again the case of a freak event causing a problem sufficient to overcome the connection to the drilling pipe and at least two redundant countermeasures set up to keep the pipe closed in case of such an event. My claim in that case was that the level of redundancy in safety measures was clearly too low relative to the cost of the broken pipe.

I don't know how we settle on two backups as the optimal number of back-ups. Both in the oil spill case and in the nuclear reactor it seems that the risk justified a bit more redundancy. My friends who want to ban nuclear power outright for Japan seem to be missing the economic argument that there is always a price that justifies doing less of something. If the correct number of redundant measures is high enough we will have the same think happen if we ban nuclear power or if we require safety measures sufficient to have the same effect.

This was all I was debating, but somehow I got public choice thrown back in my face. The claim was that banning was a better commitment than regulations because regulations would be shaped by greedy politicians and lobbyists. I like that my progressive friends are learning public choice, but it bothers me that they are applying it inconsistently.

I am making a simple Pigouvian point, that we can internalize the social costs by increasing regulation. I am not entirely in support of this position, but I didn't think that it would be subverted so easily by the claim that it was not draconian enough. Who knew?