As Nuclear Reactors Age, the Money To Close Them Lags

Harperdog writes "A worrying bit of news about nuclear reactors in the U.S. from the NYT: 'The operators of 20 of the nation's aging nuclear reactors, including some whose licenses expire soon, have not saved nearly enough money for prompt and proper dismantling. If it turns out that they must close, the owners intend to let them sit like industrial relics for 20 to 60 years or even longer while interest accrues in the reactors' retirement accounts.'"

Comments

Did the rules change?

[Karmashock]

It's easy to forget that when these reactors were set up the world was a different place. The "retirement" accounts for these reactors probably assumed a MUCH lower retirement cost. So it's not the fault of the utility if there isn't enough money in the accounts if the rules changed between point A and point B.

Something that is irritating about many regulations is that they're very casually passed sometimes without really considering what the rule actually costs. If these fellows didn't save enough by the standards of the old cost projections then I see no fault with them. This is a situation where the government should probably take responsibility for the costs IF they are in fact responsible for making them go up.

If they never were going to save enough even by the old rules then these utilities are at fault for mismanagement and I'd be fine with squeezing them to pony up the difference.

Regardless, the money required to dismantle these reactors is probably in excess of what the utilities are themselves liable. So the government should probably pay that difference.

I know a lot of people don't like this idea because budgets are getting tight. But when you pass regulations they cost someone money. If the government doesn't want to pay it can always relax the regulation in some circumstances. But short of that it isn't reasonable to change the rules on the utilities and then expect them to make up the difference.

Short of that, the utilities will do what they're already doing... just leaving the money in an account to mature until such time as it can cover dismantling costs.

So those are the options on the ground. Maybe I'm being unfair to someone... this is my impression of the matter.

Re:Two sides

[davester666]

This is exactly what happens in the gas business. For decades, gas stations were "independently owned", and when they closed, the owner never would have the money to clean up the site [as gas always winds up leaking into the ground from the tanks and the various lines]. Then the gov't would require a deposit, which was simply forfeited as it was too small to cover cleaning up the site. Finally, they forced the main petroleum industry companies to [whichever 'brand' was on the station] pay for cleaning up the sites. And what to they do...just flatten the buildings, put up a temporary fence around the now-vacant lot, and just pay the now-minimal property tax on the site indefinitely...

Re:Unlikely

[inviolet]

They'll just use corrupt business laws and politics to rape the "retirement accounts" for their own benefit. Then they'll leave the dangerous corpses of their businesses as a warning to future generations on the stupidity of trusting your future to lowest-common-denominator businessmen.

Yep.

It's situations like this, and the revelation of how costs were cut on Fukushima's seawall by omitting the datapoint of the big tsunami in the 1800s, that made me realize something that shocked me:

Nuclear power is perfectly safe, ideal, and awesome... but nuclear power built by humans is NOT. As a species we are short-sighted venal lying scammers, so there are many glorious technologies (nanotech anyone?) that become liabilities in our hands.