Nuclear decommissioning costs – hugely underestimated by UK
Public Accounts Committee – Thirty-Seventh Report HM Treasury: Whole of Government Accounts 2010-11 HM Treasury: Whole of Government Accounts 2010-11 – Public Accounts Committee Contents
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/867/86706.htm
11 April 2013 “…… The C&AG’s report on the 2010-11 WGA shows the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s estimated cost of civil nuclear decommissioning increased by around £16 billion to £53 billion between 2007 and 2011. We asked the Treasury how the WGA would be used to influence any decision made in relation to future investments in the nuclear sector. The Treasury acknowledged that not considering these costs when the power stations were built had been a mistake, and considered that the critical issue was to factor in these costs in future, so that the taxpayer would not be burdened with unexpected additional costs of £60 billion.[ http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Claverton/message/10673
120 years and 100 billion pounds for Uk to clean up Sellafield and Dounreay nuclear sites
Nuclear clean-up to cost £100bn and take 120 years. Decommissioning, no2nuclearpower, 9 December 2012 BRITAIN’S taxpayers will be landed with a bill of more than £100bn for cleaning up radioactive waste from sites such as Sellafield and Dounreay, according to the chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The amount represents a near-doubling of the £56bn cleanup cost announced when the NDA began operating in 2005, and could rise still more. The warning comes as NDA engineers start work on some of the biggest and most expensive engineering projects seen in Britain — building giant robotic grabs to lift deadly nuclear waste from Sellafield’s decaying 1950s repositories.
The buildings being targeted include Sellafield’s B29 and B30 cooling ponds, where decaying 1950s fuel rods are stored. This weekend John Clarke, chief executive of the NDA, said he was spending £3bn a year on the cleanup, with about £1.6bn of that going on Sellafield alone. Such sums are similar to those spent on the London Olympic site at the peak of construction.
Figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that, since Britain’s first nuclear power station opened in 1956, they have generated 2.5 billion megawatt hours of electricity — worth £125 billion at today’s prices. If the cost of building Britain’s 20-odd nuclear power stations (around £10bn-£12bn each in today’s money), is included, it would far exceed the value of the power produced, say experts.
Such figures show why power companies, which would be responsible for the waste, are refusing to build new nuclear power stations without government guarantees of a consumer subsidy that will almost double the market price for their power.
Sunday Times 9th Dec 2012 more >> http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/daily12/daily.php?dailynewsid=343
Underneath it all, the nuclear industry knows that it is in trouble, especially in UK
Nuclear industry faces up to reality of ‘interesting times’ The Engineer, 7 December 2012 | ByStuart Nathan ”………Part of the problem is that the nuclear landscape is so complicated, especially in the UK, with its history as a nuclear
pioneer and the legacy of experiment that has left behind. John Clarke of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, again reflecting the mood of realism, put it in a way which pretty much everyone would understand. ‘It’s like telling children to put their toys away before getting out new ones. Clearing up the mess is a key enabler to new build.’
…… .it’s relatively easy to put toys away. Nuclear is different. ‘At Sellafield, we’re dealing with structures which were put up in the 1940s in great haste to support military programmes, where the only concern was “is it safe for today”,’ he said. ‘They were neverdesigned to have waste taken out of them, and the waste is poorly categorised — we often don’t really know what it is.’
The situation isn’t much better even at industrial-scale power stations, said Peter Walkden, commercial director of Magnox. ‘It was never going to be easy to decommission a 50 year old plant that was never designed to be decommissioned, under a regime that was designed for operation,’ he said. Decommissioning a Magnox plant takes the best part of a century — three years to defuel, then ten years of preparation for care and maintenance while radioactivity subsides (the stage that current decommissioning projects are in), followed by 85 years of care and maintenance, then about ten years to clear the site.
A bit more than just putting the toys away, and something that can’t be done before building new plants’. ….”
Nuclear companies’ new money spinner – closing down nuclear reactors
multinationals are aligning themselves into strategic relationships to attract the highly lucrative subcontracts coming on stream. Multi-disciplinary consultant Atkins recently formed a joint venture with French-based nuclear specialist Areva to bid for tier two work on decommissioning and fuel management projects in the UK.
Nuclear Legacy, The Construction Index, 23 Nov 12“…….To speed up the process, Sellafield Ltd, the site licence company owned by PBO Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), has started to implement a series of strategic alliances with a combined value of £9bn.
The first framework agreement – The Design Services Alliance – was awarded in February: a £1.5bn contract to The Progressive Alliance (led by Babcock and URS) and AXIOM (a consortium of Amec, Jacobs, Mott McDonald and Assystem). It is expected to extend to 15 years.
A joint venture between Morgan Sindall and Arup has recently been named preferred bidder for the second framework, the £1.1bn Infrastructure Strategic Alliance (ISA). Sellafield Ltd expects to announce the preferred bidder for its Multi Discipline Site Wide Works framework agreement before the end of 2012. Read more »
Germany moving successfully to a nuclear free economy
The nuclear industry and its supporters pounced on Merkel’s decision. They predicted blackouts on a scale Germany hadn’t experienced since World War II and skyrocketing electricity prices that would wreck the nation’s heavy manufacturing sector, the bedrock of the German economy. They warned that Germany would cease to be an energy exporter and be forced to import electricity from, of all places, French nuclear power plants. Utilities would have to burn more coal to make up for the lost nuclear power, they said, pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The British weekly The Economist branded Merkel’s action “a lunatic gamble.”
More than a year and a half later, however, those dire predictions haven’t materialized.
”You have to choose between the old system and the new one. And we have chosen renewables.”
Germany Abandons Nuclear Power and Lives to Talk About It, Bloomberg Business Week By Osha Gray Davidson November 16, 2012“……..Like all revolutions, the German Energiewende was set in motion by many factors and its course altered by a multitude of events and actors along the way. A few key moments stand out, however, and the Chernobyl catastrophe is one of them. To fully understand the Energiewende, and to anticipate its future twists and turns, it’s essential to understand the role Chernobyl played in shaping the German public’s view of nuclear power. Read more »
Extremely costly – UK’s nuclear wastes
Recommend that you go to this link, as the page has many very informative graphics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/16/nuclear-waste-sellafield How much do we spend on nuclear waste? Duncan Clark guardian.co.uk, 16 November 2012 Last week, a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO)highlighted the spiralling costs of running Sellafield, the UK’s huge nuclear
reprocessing and storage site. Duncan Clark reviews the data
How much do we spend on nuclear decommissioning and waste handling? Read more »
Price Anderson Act – the USA’s BIG nuclear subsidy
It is worth noting that Exelon, as an owner and operator of more nuclear power plants than any other American company, benefits to a considerable degree from what is potentially one of the largest government subsidies of energy production in world history, the Price Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.
Nuclear Company Blasts Wind Industry Tax Incentive KCET, by Chris Clarke
on October 23, 2012 The largest operator of nuclear power plants in the United States has blasted the Wind Production Tax Credit in a commissioned study…… Read more »
Continued downward slide of the global nuclear industry
World Nuclear Industry Status Report maps nuclear power’s global decline http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/10/22/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-maps-nuclear-powers-glo.html A new World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012, authored by Mycle Schneider with Antony Froggatt and Julie Hazemann, maps the continuing global decline of nuclear power. The report shows that nuclear’s future rests not on new construction, but that “Plant life extension seems the most likely survival strategy of the nuclear industry at this point” – a good reason to continue to block reactor license extensions. The report noted that: “Only seven reactors started up, while 19 were shut down in 2011.” By July 2012, “only two were started up, just compensating for two that were shut down so far this year”. Other highlights:
China is spending five times more on renewables than nuclear post-Fukushima with no new nuclear construction since 3/11; nine reactors have been listed as “under construction” for more than 20 years; four countries – Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Taiwan – will phase out nuclear power and five more to date – Egypt, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait and Thailand – have abandoned plans to develop, or re-develop nuclear power; new builds have been canceled in Brazil, France, India and the US; certification of new reactor technologies has been delayed numerous times; in the US, of the 28 license applications received, 16 were subsequently delayed and eight were suspended indefinitely or officially canceled; of the 59 units under construction in the world, at least 18 are experiencing multi-year delays, while the remaining 41 projects were started within the past five years or have not yet reached project start-up dates.
Uranium mining from the oceans – an uneconomic dream
“…….. Ocean-mined uranium feasible, but not economical The Street By Resource Investing News 08/29/12 - If uranium buyers can’t find enough U308 on land, perhaps they can turn to the sea; or so say scientists from the University of Alabama and the American Chemical Society. “The ocean actually contains more uranium, although very dilute, than you can find in any land source in total,” said chemist Robin Rogers in a recent news conference, “which means we have a wonderful resource; it’s just always been very expensive to get it out.”
On and off over the past half century, scientists have been researching ways to extract uranium from seawater, but the process has always proved so costly and laborious that no one in the industry took it seriously. The US Department of Energy recently funded a project to develop a more cost-efficient process, and as a result researchers were able to decrease the cost estimate for ocean-mined uranium by over 46 percent to $300 per pound. Unfortunately, that’s five times costlier than traditional mining and a far cry from economical.
France has to, but can’t afford to, decommission its nuclear reactors
What is not tolerable is that the funds are managed by the operators”
Over the past six yeas there has been a veritable veil pulled over this subject.”
French Nuclear Dismantling Funds May Fall Short, Report Says http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/french-nuclear-dismantling-funds-may-fall-short-report-says.html By Tara Patel – Jul 24, 2012 Electricite de France SA and Areva SA (AREVA), along with other French nuclear operators, may not be setting aside enough funds to pay for future dismantling of reactors and treatment and storage of atomic waste, according to a parliamentary report.
Cost estimates by atomic operators don’t have a “safety margin and risk being raised in the future,” according to a report published today by a national panel charged with evaluating the financial costs of atomic decommissioning. Current estimates carry “large margins of uncertainty.” Read more »
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