Dominion Announces Plans To Close Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station In 2013

An anonymous reader writes "Due to low electricity prices in the Midwest, and an inability to find a buyer for the power station, Dominion will be shutting down and decomissioning Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station. One of two operating nuclear power stations in Wisconsin, Kewaunee's license from the NRC was not due to expire until the end of 2033."

Comments

Nuclear Waste Storage facility

[slashdyke]

Now comes the fun part, explaining to the tax payers and anyone else involved, why it stops producing electricity today, but they still pay for the cleanup and stoarage of the radiated materials for the next hundred or so years. Was that cost factored in to all the 'cheap energy prices' the electricity was sold for?

Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility

[Eightbitgnosis]

The answer to your question can be found in a magical and mysterious thing called TFA

Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility

[ScottyLad]

The answer, as so often is the case, is in TFA...

Kewaunee's decommissioning trust is currently fully funded, and the company believes that the amounts available in the trust plus expected earnings will be sufficient to cover all decommissioning costs expected to be incurred after the station closes.

Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility

[nojayuk]

Yes, the cost was factored in. All US nuclear operators pay 0.1c per kWh generated to the US government to deal with spent nuclear fuel. They also pay into a fund for decommissioning reactors at end-of-life; I don't know whether this particular reactor's fund is paid off.

I don't know if they're going to decommission this reactor quickly or not; British practice is to seal the reactor building after final defuelling, demolish the ancillary buildings like turbine halls etc. which have no radiological problems and let the reactor vessel "cool down" for about 80 years in a custodianship period. That costs very little to do (basically a wire fence, secure doors and a few watchmen) and at the end of that period the rest of the plant can be demolished like any other building, with maybe some asbestos to worry about.

Faster decommissioning of the site requires the reactor vessel, the only part which is noticeably radioactive, to be removed and then buried in a pit for a few decades after which it can be dug up and treated as regular scrap. All of the really radioactive material on the site is in the fuel rods and that is dealt with separately when the reactor is taken out of service.

Re:Nuclear Waste Storage facility

[delt0r]

Yes, the cost was factored in. All US nuclear operators pay 0.1c per kWh generated to the US government to deal with spent nuclear fuel.

Which is stupid since there is no incentive to reduce waste. You pay the same per kWh no matter how much waste that kWh produces.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. The reason they're shutting it down is that it's being undercut by cheap natural gas. A small, single-reactor power plant is very inefficient. Most plants have two or more large reactors. Economy of scale.

Re:Aging Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorium has some advantages but it's not really a new idea and particularly full of roses. Why do we need to switch to it? Not really a magic bullet. Just gradually move to better nuclear plants as time rolls on, whether Uranium or Thorium or Hydrogen-Fusion or what-have-you. Do the same with every power plant of every kind that we keep using. Phase out fossil fuels where we can.

I don't want to sound like a dick, but the bit about penning traps and black holes are so sci-fi that it makes you sound like you're choosing Thorium because it sounds cool and sci-fi-ish.

Re:The real reason nuclear power is not taking off

[Your.Master]

One power plant in one place is economically unviable, therefore nuclear power is a bad idea always everywhere and there has never been opposition that could be described as irrational.

Also, restaurants won't ever take off because I know this one restaurant halfway across the country that closed down because ingredients cost too much and nobody would eat there if they used cheaper ingredients.

This whole thing seems like a non-story to me. "EXTRA! EXTRA! Random business venture you probably never heard of before this news article folds after almost 40 years!"

Re:The real reason nuclear power is not taking off

[1u3hr]

Nuclear is just too freaking expensive to operate with any semblance of reasonable safety.

Nuclear has to pay to clean up the mess. Whereas a coal plant can dump megatonnes of CO2 and sulphur into the air and just collect the money from selling power, leaving the rest of us to pay the cost for the next centuries.

I see that the USA hasn't had the same increase

[Chrisq]

in the USA real consumer prices for electricity have fallen slightly over the same period!

So much for "this is a world problem" that the governments kept telling us

German is being very foolish

[Viol8]

ITYF thanks to your idiotic chancellor that german power companies are starting to build coal fired replacements for those shut down nuclear plants. So much for germany being green eh?

Renewables you say? Would those be the windfarms in the north which are 600km from where most of the energy is needed in the south? And given that the wind doesn't always blow - what other renewables did you have in mind? Solar? Yeah , right, in northern europe... suuure. Hydro? Nope, not enough locations. Tidal/wave? Same problem as wind with power transmission. So what is this great hope you germans have for renewables?

Re:Well...

[Joce640k]

...apart from all that pesky CO2.