Question: Isn’t nuclear power too risky to qualify for insurance, so the government has to cover liability insurance through the Price-Anderson Act?

Steven Wray answered on 10 Nov 2015:

I don’t know a lot about the way insurance is set up for nuclear power plants. However in terms of safety records, Nuclear is statistically the safest type of electricity generation. I can make this sweeping statement based off the fact that the rate of deaths per trillion kWhr (unit of energy) is way down at 90 for Nuclear. But the same figure for coal generation comes out at 170,000! That makes coal almost 2,000 times more deadly! On that scale it’s even marginally safer than wind energy which has caused approximately 150 deaths per trillion kWhr. (My source is a forbes article from 2012 so it’s not the most up to date but probably quite close!).