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Treehugger Kicks Up Some FUD Over U.K. Decommissioning

By Eric McErlain
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.

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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.
April 5, 2006 at 12:07 PM
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.
April 5, 2006 at 7:18 PM
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