Since the Manhattan Project was created to develop the atomic bomb back in the 1940s, the dream of a nuclear future has been fueled almost entirely by Big Government. America’s current fleet of reactors exists only because Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, limiting the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of disaster. And even with taxpayers assuming most of the risk, Wall Street still won’t finance nuclear reactors without direct federal assistance, in part because construction costs are so high (up to $20 billion per plant) and in part because nukes are the only energy investment that can be rendered worthless in a matter of hours. “In a free market, where real risks and costs are accounted for, nuclear power doesn’t exist,” says Amory Lovins, a leading energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Nuclear plants “are a creation of government policy and intervention.” —— But even the lax oversight provided by the NRC was more than the industry could bear. In 1996, in one of the most aggressive enforcement moves in the agency’s history, the NRC launched an investigation into design flaws at a host of reactors and handed out significant fines. When the industry complained to Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a powerful nuclear ally, he confronted the head of the NRC in his office and threatened to cut its funding by a third unless the agency backed off. “So the NRC folded their tent and went away,” says Lochbaum. “And they’ve been away pretty much ever since.” —- America has 31 aging reactors just like Fukushima, and it wouldn’t take an earthquake or tsunami to push many of them to the brink of meltdown. A natural disaster may have triggered the crisis in Japan, but the real problem was that the plant lost power and was unable to keep its cooling systems running — a condition known as “station blackout.” At U.S. reactors, power failures have been caused by culprits as mundane as squirrels playing on power lines. In the event of a blackout, operators have only a few hours to restore power before a meltdown begins. All nukes are equipped with backup diesel generators, as well as batteries. But at Fukushima, the diesel generators were swamped by floodwaters, and the batteries lasted a mere eight hours — not nearly long enough to get power restored and avert catastrophe. NRC standards do virtually nothing to prevent such a crisis here at home. Only 11 of America’s nuclear reactors have batteries designed to supply power for up to eight hours, while the other 93 have batteries that last half that long. —- Nuclear reactors were built to last only 40 years, but the NRC has repeatedly greenlighted industry requests to keep the aging nukes running for another two decades: Of the 63 applications the NRC has received for license extensions, it has approved all 63. In some cases, according to the agency’s own Office of the Inspector General, NRC inspectors failed to verify the authenticity of safety information submitted by the industry, opting to simply cut and paste sections of the applications into their own safety reviews. —- Even after a reactor is found to be at higher risk because of new information about earthquake zones — as is the case at Indian Point, located only 38 miles from New York City — the NRC has done little to bolster safety requirements. The agency’s current risk estimate of potential core damage at the Pilgrim reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is eight times higher than its earlier 1989 estimate — yet it has done little to require the plant to prepare for an earthquake, beyond adding a few more fire hoses and other emergency gear. The Diablo Canyon plant in California, which sits near one of the most active seismic zones in the world, is supposedly engineered to withstand a 7.5 earthquake. There’s only one problem: Two nearby faults are capable of producing quakes of 7.7 or higher. Should it be shut down? —- But in America, most plants have no way of keeping the water circulating in the event of a power failure. Nor are the pools themselves typically housed in secure bunkers, because the NRC long considered it virtually impossible for the special alloy to catch fire. Fukushima proved them wrong. —- A better idea might be to simply repeal the Price-Anderson Act and force the nuclear industry to take responsibility for the risks of running these old plants, rather than laying it all off on taxpayers. The meltdown in Japan could cost Tokyo Electric some $130 billion — roughly three times what the Deepwater Horizon spill cost BP. If nuke owners had to put their own money where their atoms are, the crumbling old reactors would get cleaned up or shut down in a heartbeat.