Decommissioning Nuclear Plants Costing Far More Than Expected 288
Lasrick writes: "This article takes a look at cost estimates of nuclear power plant decommissioning from the 1980s, and how widely inaccurate they turned out to be. This is a pretty fascinating look at past articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that consistently downplayed the costs of decommissioning, for example: 'The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommission—or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plant—constructed early in the 1960s for $39 million—cost $608 million. The plant's spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in. To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year.'"
Why is this happening? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a shortage of concrete?
why don't we keep them and use them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:First.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also got to kill the stupid environmentalists (only the stupid kind that are opposed to nuclear because it contains the word "nuclear", to coal, oil and gas cause it contains carbon, to hydroelectric cause of sediments, to wind cause of birds, to solar cause of toxic elements during production, ...). Sadly, there aren't enough environmentalists who can look at the whole picture and realize that nuclear plants produce less radioactive waste than coal plants, skyscrapers kill more birds than wind power, etc., and that if they want to accomplish something they need to support a realistic objective.
Re:It is expensive and it always will be. (Score:4, Interesting)
I just complete an introductory course to nuclear technology, they say burn fuel, burnup ratio all the time. Technically is wrong, but even nuclear engineers talk about burning nuclear fuel.
Re:First.... (Score:5, Interesting)
While the $39 million build cost would be far, far greater after adjusting for inflation, making the $608 million decommissioning seem less ridiculous, this still seems much more expensive then it ought to be. Why? Lawyers? Regulations? A poor reactor design that is simply very difficult to dismantle safely?
Coal is the largest and fastest-growing power source worldwide, and as I understand it, the dirtiest in terms of pollution in general as well as CO2. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] seems to say that renewables (including, er, wood burning?!) currently have 5% market share in the U.S. (the tables could use some clarifications). In practice, nuclear energy is a necessary ingredient to get CO2 emissions under control. So let's figure out what these huge costs are and then talk about how to reduce them in the future.
Re:First.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey if all the hardcore greenies die off, that will leave plenty more of the Earth's resources for the rest of us, and we could have clean nuclear energy without any issues.
And yes Coal does release more radiation than nuclear. Funnily enough they keep the radiation in the nuclear plant extremely well.
Coal contains radioactive compounds in small quantities, which are then burnt, sent up a chimney and left to spread wherever the air currents want to take them.
http://www.scientificamerican.... [scientificamerican.com]
Who is so stupid again? The people more educated than yourself?
Re:Nuclear power is too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
> All the NIMBY types and loud anti-nuke folks have made sure it's too expensive
So they're the ones to blame for Brown's Ferry and TMI, which basically trebled the cost of nukes in the US due to faulty engineering and operations? I guess they were also the reason that the turbine shafts at Darlington kept failing, that the fuel pod got stuck in the AVR, that Superphénix developed leaks in the cooling system, that the Magnox's all had to be dramatically upgraded to get rid of "shine" and that Soviet reactors have nasty positive void coefficients.
Do you really think ridiculous statements like this help the cause?