Dear Editor,
Now that we know nuclear waste will not be coming to Creighton, your readers won't have to concern themselves about the lack of coverage in cases of radioactive contamination in regular property insurance policies.
Nevertheless, the record needs to be set straight.
By 1951, every insurance company in the western world had decided not to provide such coverage. So they inserted a “nuclear exclusion clause” in their policies to void all coverage in the event of radioactive contamination. Why?
In his recent letter to the editor, Dr. Jeremy Whitlock says the reason is that people were already covered by the Nuclear Liability Act.
But that law was passed in 1976, 25 years after the nuclear exclusion clause. Whitlock’s explanation is evidently incorrect.
The truth is that insurance policies can’t legally be issued if the insurers have no way of paying when things go wrong.
Since radiation damage can run into many billions of dollars – who knows how many? – theinsurance companies long ago said, “Count us out.”
That shifted the financial burden to the nuclear industry, which pressured government to provide them with a kind of preemptive bankruptcy protection.
And so the Nuclear Liability Act was born. It limits the liability of any nuclear company following a contamination incident, and the Canadian taxpayer picks up the tab for any damages that exceed that limit.
So instead of making a claim to their insurance company, folks with radioactively contaminated property have to seek compensation from Ontario Power Generation or from Ottawa, leaving it to those bodies to estimate how much “harm” was actually suffered, if any.
It may not be so easy to collect. Consider the injured Canadian veterans who have trouble getting what is owed them for their disabilities, or the Aboriginal inhabitants of this land who have difficulties obtaining adequate facilities for clean water and fire protection.
The nuclear industry just can't afford to play by the same rules as everyone else. For more on this topic, see http://ccnr.org/insurance.html .
