Skip to main content

Treehugger Kicks Up Some FUD Over U.K. Decommissioning

The big news out of Britain this week was an announcement that the government would have to pay over $120 billion (70 billion pounds) to clean up their national nuclear program. This led the folks at Treehugger to write:
We thought this news item adds needed perspective to the notion that mitigating climate change with nuclear energy will be cost effective over the full life cycle. New sites will at some future point again have to be made "safe." Much of a wind turbine will have positive scrap value at the end of it's design life; while much of a nuclear generation station, and all of its uranium series waste will have a negative value.
Putting aside for a moment the long-term potential of recycling used nuclear fuel, what John Laumer at Treehugger neglected to mention is that most of the funds dedicated are going to be used to address the legacy of Britain's military nuclear programs, not commercial nuclear energy production. Here's former U.K. Energy Minister Brian Wilson:
To make any parallels between last week's announcement and the current debate about nuclear new-build is, however, illogical, and no more than a propaganda point. The civil nuclear industry did not create Sellafield or most of the other sites. The enormous pressure which existed for rapid solutions and the cutting of corners did not come from the demands of power stations, but from generals and politicians. The extraordinarily cavalier approach which existed towards the treatment of deadly materials in the early decades is utterly incompatible with the stringencies of the highly regulated civil nuclear industry.
That's something to keep in mind when you run into claims like this from Treehugger.

Technorati tags: , , , ,

Comments

Matthew66 said…
I would also point out that in the UK, until recent years, electricity production and distribution was a government owned monopoly. Successive governments chose not to set up decommissioning funds because they wanted to keep electricity prices artificially low - after all a price hike will directly affect a politician's reelection prospects. It would be better all around if all countries required all industrial facilities to establish decommissioning funds. Nuclear plants are not the only industrial sites that are expensive to return to greenfields.
Anonymous said…
Another thing is that the British reactors are gas cooled and use graphite as moderator. This means you get very large amounts of radioactive graphite to deal with when you tear the plant down. The radioactive demolition waste volumes are realtively immense and decommissioning cost are at least five times as high as for LWR plants.

Not good.

Note to self: don't build graphite reactors.

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin