And what about nuclear power station? Shouldn’t the government have a say in it, how secure it should be? I understand that it’s private property but if something goes badly, the properties around it are threatened.
Yes an N-plant can be dangerous, so we want the safest set up possible. But I think that is a free people and free press.
In today’s world, a few bureaucrats check something and everyone else just assumes it is safe and never checks. Yikes! Do you feel safe?
Another possibility: Imagine a population of people conditioned to check everything for themselves, and someone starts building an N-plant. You would have the neighbors posting photographs of construction on the Internet. Everyone discussing the plans and criticizing in Internet forums. Town meetings. Some people walking around with geiger counters, some people flying private drones over, some people looking up the geological history of the area on the Internet. Lots of publicity. . . that sounds safer to me.
As a nuclear engineer and a free market advocate, I can assure you that it makes sense for a nuclear power station to be as safe as it can be. Every day a nuclear plant is shut down, it costs the utility upwards of a million dollars. A safe power plant is a profitable power plant.
In regards to problems if an accident does occur and there is contamination—that’s where property rights come in. In the free market, nuclear plants would not be located next to densely populated areas anyways because the insurance would cost to much for the power station.
We have a problem here in Australia where power companies are owned by the State governments. The politicians are so afraid of a black/brown-out being blamed on them, that they have “gold-plated” the power companies - invested way too much money in them, to reduce the .001% chance of a power failure to .00001% (not real figures, but you get the point).
The Federal government (a leftist party!) is currently urging the State governments to sell these assets to the private sector.
6 Comments to “Yaron Answers: How Do You Deregulate Energy?”
And what about nuclear power station? Shouldn’t the government have a say in it, how secure it should be? I understand that it’s private property but if something goes badly, the properties around it are threatened.
Yes an N-plant can be dangerous, so we want the safest set up possible. But I think that is a free people and free press.
In today’s world, a few bureaucrats check something and everyone else just assumes it is safe and never checks. Yikes! Do you feel safe?
Another possibility: Imagine a population of people conditioned to check everything for themselves, and someone starts building an N-plant. You would have the neighbors posting photographs of construction on the Internet. Everyone discussing the plans and criticizing in Internet forums. Town meetings. Some people walking around with geiger counters, some people flying private drones over, some people looking up the geological history of the area on the Internet. Lots of publicity. . . that sounds safer to me.
Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production. http://industrialprogress.net/2012/05/16/nuclear-power-is-the-safest-power-the-best-of-power-hour/
As a nuclear engineer and a free market advocate, I can assure you that it makes sense for a nuclear power station to be as safe as it can be. Every day a nuclear plant is shut down, it costs the utility upwards of a million dollars. A safe power plant is a profitable power plant.
In regards to problems if an accident does occur and there is contamination—that’s where property rights come in. In the free market, nuclear plants would not be located next to densely populated areas anyways because the insurance would cost to much for the power station.
Thanks!
We have a problem here in Australia where power companies are owned by the State governments. The politicians are so afraid of a black/brown-out being blamed on them, that they have “gold-plated” the power companies - invested way too much money in them, to reduce the .001% chance of a power failure to .00001% (not real figures, but you get the point).
The Federal government (a leftist party!) is currently urging the State governments to sell these assets to the private sector.