UK: Private contractors not liable for accidents during decommissioning of reactors

[bananas]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/23/nuclear-leaks-bill-paid-taxpayer

Nuclear leaks bill will be paid by taxpayer
Private contractors not liable for accidents during decommissioning

Jamie Doward
The Observer, Saturday 22 February 2014

The private consortium that will manage the decommissioning of Britain's ageing Magnox nuclear reactors will not be held financially liable if they suffer a major radioactive incident – even if it costs billions of pounds to clear up, it has emerged.

The government will indemnify the private contractors, which means the taxpayer will be left to foot the bill for any leak, a similar arrangement to how things stand now. Critics complain that granting the multimillion-pound contract to a private consortium while freeing it of liability for a nuclear incident is such a poor deal for the taxpayer that it will render its new management unaccountable. The government has rejected this claim.

Confirmation of the indemnity was made at the start of this month, when the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) slipped out a departmental minute relating to the Magnox reactors. Built in the 1960s, originally to produce plutonium to make nuclear weapons, the reactors include those at Sizewell, Hinkley and Dungeness.

They are now at the end of their lives and the government is preparing to fully decommission them, something that has never been done with such a reactor anywhere in the world. The minute reveals that private companies would refuse to bid for the decommissioning contract if they had to face paying out billions of pounds over a radioactive incident.

<snip>

[Frytruk33]

1. What a shocker

Reminds me of the private contractors "Blackwater" who massacred innocent Iraqui civilians, then were flown back to the US under the cover of night to escape punishment.