Possibility of Capital Reserve Allocation for Nuclear-Risk Insurance Coverage on Transitioning to SMRs

It is shown that on creation of capital reserve to cover the risk of hypothetical severe accidents in NPP the size of the allocation is comparable to or greater than the fuel costs for a power-generating unit of a large NPP. The damage consequent to severe accidents in NPP is 1000 times greater than the insurance limits adopted for nuclear risks. An empirical power-law function (with exponent 1.6) representing the damage consequent to a severe accident as a function of the reactor capacity is studied. As a consequence of the nonlinearity of the reduction of the scale of the damage caused by a hypothetical accident on transitioning to small modular reactors (SMRs) the capital reserve allocated for risk insurance for NPP becomes realistic.