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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.'"
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.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No risk necessary. Just take the spent fuel and burn it in a newer-gen reactor.
Ok, ok, transporting radioactive waste is hazardous. So be careful about that.
They might be expensive to keep around. Until you price a divorce.
Have gnu, will travel.
It seems unlikely that interest will grow faster than the cost of dismantling increases. But, letting the shortest half-life stuff decay will make the task a little less challenging.
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Hell yeah! Nuclear power plants going for cheap. I'll take one! Surplus ICBM silos are interesting, but have far too many drawbacks. But nuclear power plants? Those things are bigger than a city block, above ground, extremely stable, etc. I'd love to buy one.
For starters, I think I'd start cutting up one of the cooling towers, until it looked like a giant medieval castle, just smooth and round instead of 4 stone walls. Re-enactments of Monty Python's & the Holy Grail are, of course, obligatory.
After that, I'd have to buy as much flesh-tone paint as I can afford. It would take some time, but just think of it... http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_omMU_7Vv1us/S7aqBJUCP_I/AAAAAAAAAIE/HMaftmCYRGM/s1600/san-onofre_songs.jpg">Giant nuclear boobies!
As an added bonus, nuclear power plants always need ample water, so you're guaranteed to get a private lake, river, or beachfront property, no matter which one you buy. They're also universally pretty close to mega population centers, so, while it's likely a nice quiet location, you won't be too far from a major city, unlike many of those silos.
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The technology that dch24 mentioned already exists. European nations already do it. The United States has an outdated treaty with Russia that prevents us from doing it.
Do it the way 1st world countries deal with e-waste and other heavy metal contaminated waste. Ship it off to a 3rd world country!
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...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
while your knowledge of reactors and economics is spotty, your knowledge of government is uncanny.
Unless you MAKE them do it, they won't.
No risk necessary. Just take the spent fuel and burn it in a newer-gen reactor.
What about the other large quantity of low-level stuff like the containment chamber, piping, etc. Really the fuel itself is the least of the cleanup problem.
You forget the contaminated structure in the reactors. The fuel is a minor issue but the containment is more of a problem.
I suspect that the owners will end up going bankrupt and leave the problem to the government.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Depends on what isotope of plutonium. If you burn the nuclear material through enough stages you're left with Pu-238 which has a half life of 88 years. I don't know of any Cesium isotope that has a half-life of 240 years (and you get to define what an "ecologic half life" is,) the primary concern with nuclear materials is Cs-137, which has a half life of 30 years.
I see nothing inherently dangerous about nuclear reactors. We know sodium reactors don't go critical even when there's a total coolant failure.
Fukushima had a total coolant failure, and didn't go critical, but it was certainly dangerous. And there they had (and used) the option to pump cold water into the primary coolant loop and vent steam from it - an option which wouldn't be available with sodium.
Reprocessing fuel is in itself dangerous: the third worst nuclear accident was at a reprocessing plant. I suspect your analysis of waste reduction through reprocessing is highly optimistic, but I lack the expertise to say for sure.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
We don't. Not always. Take the German AVR. The, where it comes to beta-radation, most contaminated place in the world. The fuel is partly still in the reactor, because it's jammed in cracks in the bottom of the reactorvessel. It's filled with concrete and labeled 'do not open until 2100' in the hope our great-grandchildren might know what to do with it.
A nice gift to future generations.
The owners don't go bankrupt, just think psychopath corporate executives. When a nuclear power station is nearing end of life, they simply split if off as an independent company and sell it to the public based on current income and buried in debt with not of zero money left in the budget but in fact negative tens of millions left in the budget for shutdown.
Reality is the only safe way to do a nuclear power station is to have them totally under government control. Taxpayers pay the bill and taxpayers get the benefit of any positive returns during the life of the nuclear power station because at the end of the day it is taxpayers who will always get lumbered with the loses, while psychopath corporate executives wander of with multi-million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Excuse me, gas isn't toxic? Benzene is a serious carcinogen in fact the entire group of BTEX chemicals are known carcinogens and have known health impacts. Add to that the impact of MTBE (one of the most serious contaminants in ground water today), and gasoline leaks are a serious problem. By the way, though there is some metabolism of gasoline byproduct by some bacteria, it appears that fungus' do the heavy lifting when it comes to soil recovering from petrochemical spills.
There are lots of ways of dealing with it. Grind it up finely and centrifuge it to separate out the different elements, for example, so that you've concentrated all of the stuff that's still radioactive. Then use that in medical sterilisation, x-ray machines, radiothermal generators, and betavoltaics. The reason we don't is not that we lack the ability, it's that we lack the economic incentive. Filling it with concrete and leaving it for a hundred years is cheap, and for beta emitters it's total overkill for preventing contamination - we put beta emitters in power supplies for pacemakers and on glowing key fobs these days. Recycling it is going to cost a lot more than the value of the materials you will extract. That said, recycling may be more attractive if you've got a lot of them to process at once, so passing them to the future to handle makes sense.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Solar just passed the $1 per watt milestone so in fact it is now cost competitive with oil which is fully subsidized. And since the new cells can be deposited on a flexible plastic substrate, we can now cover all kinds of artifacts and structures with these new inexpensive solar cells. We live in a fantasy. The presumptions upon which our economy functions include infinite natural resources, infinite capacity to recover from prolific environmental abuse, and infinite capacity for the middle class to take the brunt of the fiscal misconduct of the wealthy and powerful.
There is a human tendency when raiding the cookie jar to just keep taking until nothing is left. This week the Cal State University Regents this week voted themselves a 10% increase in pay. This in a time where Universities across the state are being crushed by lack of state funding, teachers are being let go, classes eliminated from the curriculum and students everywhere are crumpling under draconian increases of tuition. Some of the top state CSU executives received raises as large as 22%. They had to close down several campuses for fear of violent protest. This is just one example of people who should be leading by example, instead using their position to take advantage of the public. These people all have salaries in excess of $250,000. You can't tell me that they were so underpaid that they couldn't keep a roof over their heads. I don't have a problem with people getting fair remuneration. Just not on the backs of the rest of society, and please stop at a fair share. Leave a couple cookies for the rest of us.
There are a couple of inaccuracies to your post. The first is the inevitable seeping of gas into the ground. There was some of that in the stations with the old style underground tanks. However, those tanks have all been replaced for over a decade now. In addition, the primary thing which seeped into the ground at gas stations was MBTE, a government mandated additive to gasoline (the government no longer mandates adding MBTE to gasoline). The thing about MBTE is that it is highly volatile. As a result, the most efficient way to clean up a site where the ground is contaminated with MBTE is to make sure the dirt is exposed to the air for several years. If, as would be the case with a gas station site, there are areas several feet down with concentrations of MBTE contamination the remedy is to dig down and place venting pipes from those areas to the surface. I believe the time frame for the MBTE to clear out of the soil if it properly vented is about 5 years.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison