Decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Plant May Take Decades

gkndivebum writes "Southern California Edison has elected to decommission the San Onofre nuclear plant after a failed effort to upgrade the steam generation system. 'Nuclear economics' is the reason stated for the proposed decommissioning. Other utilities operating nuclear power plants in the US likely face similar decisions when it comes to weighing the costs of upgrading older facilities. Allowing the reactors to remain in 'safe storage' for a period of up to 60 years will allow for radioactive decay and lower radiation exposure for the workers performing the demolition."

Comments

we are not using distance at all

[swschrad]

for 50 years, the federal government has taxed nuclear fuel to build a permanent waste depository. where is it?

weasels.

Re:we are not using distance at all

[hairyfeet]

One word...NIMBYs. Frankly NIMBYs is why america will be fucked in the future, you can't get shit done here without the NIMBYs having a royal fucking shitfit so we either keep the pre-NIMBY shit running or do without, that really is the only choices we have.

The sad part is if we built the new design reactors and did a second reactor beside it that reprocessed and ran on the waste of the first? we could cut the waste problem down by so much that it would be a trivial matter, but again NIMBYs will never let that shit happen.

I would love to get some NIMBYs in a fucking room and just say "WTF are you doing? Are you living in a mud hut and doing without electricity? No, then STFU assholes" because the way the NIMBYs act you'd think power comes from the electric fairy because there is NOTHING you can build that the NIMBYs won't have a shitfit about..nuclear? "ZOMG radiation run!" fine we'll build dams then "ZOMG you'll kill teh fishies!" fine then we'll build fucking windmills, will you STFU about that? "ZOMG no, you'll kill the birdies and cause noise pollution!"...ARGH,

FUCK OFF you whiny bastards, we HAVE TO HAVE power to power to run those latte makers and iToys you love to play with and we can't get shit built with you assholes cockblocking every damned thing we try to have! Sorry if that comes off a little harsh but if you have ever talked to one you'd know there is NO right answer, they will have an objection to building ANYTHING near them, you'd have to build everything in fricking space before they would be happy.

Re:we are not using distance at all

[WalksOnDirt]

Out of interest - anyone know why we've not re-visited thorium?

Gas is cheap and nuclear is not popular. China is supposed to be working on it, though.

This is crap

[erroneus]

I have knowledge of this matter and I know it's crap. This is about negotiating with a supplier and throwing a tantrum. They have decided to cut off their nose to spite their face.

(If this sounds like a lot of opinion, it is...but I do have some knowledge on this matter. Once things are final, I'll be happy to share exactly what I know.)

For the moment, until things change, nuclear power is the only source that provides enough to keep things going without buring stuff and putting it into the air and everywhere. Already nuclear power has saved countless lives as they have safely displaced the amount of coal and gas to burn. Without nuclear power, the net carbon footprint of hybrid cars would be less than barely a net improvement over pure gasoline. Wind, solar, geothermal and others are not able to make it happen.

Anti-nuke people haven't been paying attention. But just about any way you look at it, nuclear wins. Sure it requires a great deal of care to handle it safely, but we've been doing nuclear in the US for a very long time with a pretty excellent record.

It disappoints me that greedy business interests are behaving this way. Until we have something better than nuclear, we need to keep nuclear going. (Shut them all down once we've got something better. It's not like I'm in love with the tech, but it's just so much better than burning stuff.)

Re:This is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

In 2012 The German electricity sector increased its coal usage by 4.9 percent over its coal consumption value of 2011.[43] This increase in coal usage was largely due to a power gap in Germany created after the nation shutdown 8 of its 17 nuclear power plants.[44] The shortfall in electricity supply from these 8 power plants, is primarily being filled by building more lignite coal burning power plants.

Yeah, real good job Germany, thanks for the CO2 increase...dicks.

Re:This is crap

[thegarbz]

We were paying attention to Germany who shut down their reactors but nonetheless had enough solar and wind to export ...

hahahaha. Yes they exported something. It definitely wasn't solar and wind though.

Solar makes up a pathetic 3% of Germany's power in the summer months. Wind is struggling to crack 8% and that's in a country where you can see a wind farm from every other hill. I'm not sure where you're getting your data from but you may want to do this thing called research.

By the way your wonderful Germany who are abandoning nuclear power opened 2 coal power stations last year, and are planning to open 6 new ones by the end of this year. Yes that's right, your so presumed green country with green power to spare just built 6GW of coal fired glory and plan to open another 12 power plants by 2020. What a shining example of your argument. Germany hasn't even started making serious efforts to shut down nuclear yet but have already increased their coal consumption by 5%.

Re:This is crap

[erroneus]

The supplier is not throwing the tantrum. Take my word on that for now.

The government, the NRC, is doing the right thing in all of this. As I have been exposed to this industry and have been learning what's what and what goes on, I have learned a great respect for at least THIS government agency. Every NRC person has also had direct experience in nuclear technologies. And the thing about people who know and understand the tech, know what can happen when things go wrong and NO amount of bribery or being told to look the other way will cause them to compromise what they know very well is a potentially global disaster event.

I could go on and on about this. But I do know there are forces opposed to the NRC... to its very existence. It was preciselu the lack of an effective "NRC" in Russia that allowed Chernobyl to happen and even though their regulators weren't quite what the NRC is, the people who caused the disaster had to shop their idea for drill/demonstration around quite a bit before they could find someone stupid enough to take the risks they did.

For the moment, please understand that you don't understand quite what's going on over there. From what I know, the suppliers are acting properly and appropriately. I've already said too much. But I have to say it's a common problem where business cares more about their bottom line than about other, larger issues. I'm not saying that other parties are not at fault -- the reports are public and I invite you to read through them for further insight. There's plenty of blame to spread around. But this thing about shutting down two plants which are otherwise capable of being repaired and restored to a good, safe and reliable operation? Based on everything I know, it's not merely "nuclear economics." There's a lot more.

Personally, I believe as the next steps proceed, they might well be forced to change their idea about shutting those down. And the article makes it pretty clear that the "shutting down and packing up" is a far cry from destroying the things and clearing the land.

Re:This is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

German physicist here. This is not quite true:

When Nuclear plants were shut down (drop in 2010-2011), this was mostly compensated for by renewables (and less total production). Also the further decrease in Nuclear power in 2012 was less than the increase of renewables. Yes, also coal increased in 2012, which is mostly attributed to the low cost of emission certificates. Natural gas dropped at the same time, so this is a shift because of changes in cost for different non-renewable energy carries.

Electricity production in Germany from 2009-2012 in TWh:
Nucelar: 134,9 140,6 108,0 99,5
Renewables: 94,1 103,3 123,5 136,2
Coal: 253,5 262,9 262,5 277,0
Natural gas: 78,8 86,8 82,5 70,0
All (including others): 592,4 628,6 608,9 617,6

Re:This is crap

[AK Marc]

What's hilarious is that as they push for solar, they are also pushing for bans (well, high taxes, 80%ish level) for solar panels imported from China. If China is selling at a loss, then buy them all, and resell them. The problem is that China is not selling at a loss, and the German (and US) makers can't compete. If they are really dumping, don't double the price with taxes, buy them all and put them on every house. Grid-tie them all together, and the home coverage would nearly fill the power needs. Having grown up in the US south, power needs spike as sun efficiency spikes, giving a nice correlation between need and supply.

Re:This is crap

[TubeSteak]

As I have been exposed to this industry and have been learning what's what and what goes on, I have learned a great respect for at least THIS government agency.

The NRC hasn't denied an operating permit in 30 years.

The last permit denied was only under heavy pressure.
When the facts came out, everything ended up in court with General Electric & Contractors being charged under RICO statues.

It wasn't a traditional court case, in that it was a summary jury trial.
GE & others ended up settling because the Judge agreed that their actions were fraudulent and that they engaged in racketeering.

The NRC is a very captured regulatory body.

Re:This is crap

[nojayuk]

"I thought they originally went with uranium, because you could build nuclear weapons from the waste."

Oh dear, The Lie That Will Not Die.

A uranium-fuelled reactor like a PWR works by stacking a lot of uranium fuel pellets in close proximity to each other and moderating (slowing down) the neutrons they emit so they cause fission in nearby uranium atoms, producing heat and yet more neutrons. That's it, steam-engine simple. Sure there are complexities of design and engineering but they're dealt with at the drawing board, not while the reactor is running. In the 1950s and 1960s that what was possible and cost-effective to design and build.

Breeding plutonium for nuclear weapons was carried out virtually everywhere in the world in specialised reactors, almost all of which never generated a watt of electricity since they were optimised to turn U-238 into Pu-239 without producing much Pu-240 which screws up the functioning of a nuclear weapon. There were a couple of dual-use reactor designs like the British Magnox and the infamous Soviet-era RMBK-4 reactors of Tchernobyl fame which could be tasked with short-exposure fuelling cycles to produce nearly-pure Pu-239 but they were not popular and in most cases they were never actually used to make weapons-grade Pu-239, in part because by the time they came on stream the countries building them had produced as much nuclear weapons material (a few tonnes) as they would ever need from their military reactors. Since then the number of weapons has gone down, not up and the decommissioned weapon cores are stockpiled until they can be burned up in uranium reactors as mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) elements.

Thorium reactors of the liquid salt type require continuous processing of the fuel to remove assorted highly radioactive byproducts in a chemical plant while the reactor is running. Thorium itself is not fertile, it needs to be transmuted into U-233 which is fissile and can be "burned" in the same way U-235 is in existing reactors. It's the dark secret of the LFTR design that it needs a sparkplug of enriched uranium and even some plutonium to start up from cold to begin the transmutation process and the only place that can come from at the moment is the conventional nuclear reactor industry. In addition any unburnt U-233 they produce can be extracted from the fuel stream and used in nuclear weapons after processing.

Ah but the US built a thorium reactor in the 1960s! Yes, it was a 5MW thermal experimental prototype which never ran continuously for more than a few weeks at a time. Conventional 1600MWe PWR reactors being built in China, France and Finland (the EPR 1600 design) produce nearly 5 gigawatts of heat, a thousand times as much as the prototype LFTR did and they will run for 18 to 24 months at a time between refuelling operations and produce no weapons-grade plutonium.

US Epic fail

[girlintraining]

Other utilities operating nuclear power plants in the US likely face similar decisions when it comes to weighing the costs of upgrading older facilities.

Yeah, my country unfortunately has a 60,000% idiot tax. We get massive amounts of food poisoning because people fear irradiated food. We pollute so badly that we've managed to kill large lakes and entire biomes in Africa because we're burning fossil fuel as our primary energy source when we were the ones that first created nuclear power. 4% of my fellow countrymen believe that shape-shifting reptiles are trying to control the government through political manipulation... another 7% "aren't sure". And we're reporting record numbers of people joining the Flat Earth Society, and have one of the lowest rates of acceptance in the theory of evolution of any industrialized country on Earth.

In short, we're morons. That's why nuclear power is so expensive here, and why we're letting these plants rot... it's stupid, pathetic, moronic fear of technology, science, and progress. And it's killing the planet. Literally. We are literally dying of stupidity.

Re:US Epic fail

[girlintraining]

The atomic era of investing heavily in a technology that burdens human beings with the most poisonous substances on earth for literally thousands of years needs to be put to rest and this is how we do it.

Yeah, worrying about a few hundred tons of waste we can easily bury deep in a mountain somewhere and forget about it for "literally thousands of years" is clearly inferior to cooking our planet to the point that it is no longer inhabitable.

. The promise of truly safe nuclear power will never be delivered upon due to human greed and incompetence.

No, it'll never be delivered upon because most of the human population will have died off in the next 150 years or so because we'll no longer have enough fertile land to support our current population due to global climate changed caused by fossil fuels. That's the entire planet, you know... billions are going to die from starvation because of fucking morons like yourself that are so worried about a few kilotons of nuclear waste you're willing to let the whole planet die. Also, coal power plants produce more nuclear radiation yearly than all the nuclear accidents in the entire history of the human race including our weapons testing and use.

But yeah man, let's keep trumpeting the "It has to be perfect" mantra, while we choke our planet to death with less than perfect fossil fuels.

Re:US Epic fail

[girlintraining]

"massive amounts of food poisoning " What!?!? 70% of the people in your country get food poisoning daily?

1 in 6 americans get food poisoning annually. In Britain, about 5 million people annually get food poisoning. The population of Britain is about 63 million, or a rate of about 1 in 14.

I think a rate of over double in a country with similar eating habits, socioeconomic status, and climate, constitutes massive.

Re:Our Children's Children's Children Will Save Us

[VortexCortex]

[Our Children's Children's Children Will Save Us]

From certain doom now. Just let them deal with it.

Both my aunt and neighbor told me the same crap when I asked why they don't recycle. They'll be dead before the world goes to hell.
I went through their trash and recycled for them. Each time I was scolded for going through their trash. I said I would stop...
However, to each I also told that research in neuroscience, cybernetics, and stem cells will give us the ability bring our dead back to life by scanning in their brain.

I promised that I would stop recycling for them, and also swore that if they do not start recycling that after they are dead,
I will have their bodies exhumed by whatever means necessary, and their brains scanned and I will bring them back to life
after the carelessness of people like them has caused the world they leach life from to truly "go to hell".

They both now have incentive to recycle, and have continued to do so; Even gotten some of their friends to recycle too.
These "God Fearing" people would throw the world away. It took someone putting the fear of life into them to change them.

Nuclear energy is most important. Once the last specs of coal and drops of oil are sucked from the Earth, we will look back at our fearful folly and think:
"All that useful material for making plastics and things, and the fools fucking burned it all."

It is time to realize the startling truth. You may literally have to live with the consequences of your actions forever.

Re:I thought the point

[nojayuk]

The licencing for nuclear reactors in the US, the UK and a few other countries requires that the site be returned to greenfield status after the reactor(s) on site are decommissioned. That means total demolition of the structures including the metre-thick reinforced concrete containment buildings.

In some cases if the site is to be reused immediately then the reactors are demolished quickly with special handling of the slightly radioactive pressure vessel which has suffered neutron activation. It costs a little bit less to wait a few decades for that radioactivity to decay at which point the demolition can go ahead with no radiation-specific problems. The real problem during demolition in either case with older (1970s vintage) reactors is the presence of asbestos in pipe lagging, tank insulation etc.

Re:What is the REAL cost?

[iggymanz]

Japanese killed because of radiation in Fukushima-Diachi: zero. Total count of Japanese with radiation induced health problems around Fukashima: zero.

Re:Our Children's Children

[Sethmiesters]

I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex. -Jack Handey

Re:What is the REAL cost?

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Nuclear proponents are always running around yelling wind and solar pawer can't compete on a per KW basis. Well, not if you skim off the profits and leave the cleanup to taxpayers!

Just a reminder that a decommissioning fund of almost ~$3 billion has already been collected and is sitting there ready to pay for the cleanup. And for 60 years the place will be watched over by a few security guards. $3 billion in the bank plus long term interest earned on $3 billion minus the cost of a few security guards... might cover it.

The money for this fund is skimmed off the top from operating revenues over the life of every nuclear plant. This arrangement is not imposed on all types of power plants, if a coal plant folds you're left with ash piles and poisoned ponds. And yet despite this financial hardship nuclear energy manages to deliver some of the lowest cost per KWh of any energy source. For many years.

I was bopping around trying to beautify this discussion with some real total energy output and cost per KWh over time for this particular plant, but I was soon taken into a whirlwind of ugly sentiment and hysteria spanning many years. It's hard even to dredge up meaningful figures without blasting one's way through Internet hate-articles written by Californians.

Many of those articles and hate-blogs written on computers powered by the plant itself, filled with dreams of paving Nevada (or just Somewhere Else) with windmills and unspecified solar miracle-widgets to generate 2 gigawatts to replace San Onofre.

This plant which has never hurt or injured anyone... which has generated an incredible amount of energy over the years... whose units seem to have run with impressive up-time and efficiency until that dreadful mistake with the steam generator tube upgrade, the wrath of Barbara Boxer.

A valuable public service... it has been hated for years.

Never mind the damned numbers, I can't take any more. My sympathy lies with the decommissioned power plant. California does not deserve to have nuclear energy until they grow up.

I wish the Diablo Canyon plant could grow giant legs like Howl's Castle and walk out of California overnight taking its 2 gigawatts with it. Let the Enron-era brownouts and predatory rate scalping by neighboring states begin once again.

The cost of ignorance has no bounds.

Re:Three factors of dealing with radiation

[Sir_Sri]

Radioactive decay is the mechanism by which something decays which gives off radiation.

Radiation is all sorts of stuff, from the mundane visible light, to high energy beams of doom, to, unfortunately, electrons flying around (beta radiation) and helium atoms stripped of electrons (alpha radiation), although fortunately the term 'radiation' for alpha and beta particles has mostly fallen out of use.

Any given radiation photon (or alpha particle or beta particle) is indeed short lived in the area, but the radioactivity - the amount of radiation being given off in a unit of time can be constant for quite a long time. Normally we talk about the half life (how long it takes for the amount of radiation given off to drop to 1/2 of its previous level) but half of 'enough to kill you 1000 times over' is still a problem.

Different types of radiation have different effects.

With a nuclear power plant you have a fairly diverse collection of radioactive materials and types of radiation, some of which will be a problem for a few minutes, some for a few thousand years and everything in between (and potentially some things which are going to be a problem for millions). With regards to an american reactor (which I know nothing about) 60 years could very reasonably be long enough for a large portion of the short lived radioactive isotopes to decay into something safe, and the radiation to be either absorbed by the casing or simply be radiated away at a low enough dose that it doesn't matter. And then you have to deal with the stuff that's going to be radioactive for a lot longer. Or maybe not. Who knows, in 60 years someone might actually come up with and implement a plan for what to do with all this nuclear waste we're making that isn't just 'keep in under water on site'.

Re:What is the REAL cost?

[Firethorn]

The true cost of Nuclear power is more than any other method.

Talk about easy mode! "Any other method" logically includes coal. And coal sucks. To put it in perspective, about twice as much electricity is produced each year from coal(44.9%) as from nuclear power(20.3%) in the USA.

What, you want healthcare costs included along with the fatalities? Okay, sure thing. How does $500B/year sound, for the USA ALONE?

I'd say I hate to break it to you, but that would be dishonest. I LOVE breaking this to you: The world could suffer a Chernobyl level event EVERY year and it would STILL come out cheaper than coal.

And while we are at it, lets add in all of the cost for nuclear power plant accidents both public and private funds and divide that by the the number of operating plants. Let's see, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, smaller costly but less publicized accidents.

Let's see: Chernobyl: $235B, TMI: $975M, Fukushima: too early to tell. Let's go with roughly between Chernobyl and TMI: $118B. It's probably quite high, but eh. Total: $354B, or about 3/5ths the damage coal does to the USA alone each year.

As I've said before, Chernobyl's design wouldn't have been allowed anywhere, the cost would have been far less if it had been built with a containment dome. 437 reactors, leaving the share per nuclear plant at $810M per your stupid standard.

Let's put it into better context: End of 2012 nuclear power had produced 69,760 billion kwh. Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima amount to .5 cents of cost per kwh. Yes, half a cent.

Re:What is the REAL cost?

[sjames]

I live in Ga and here we're actually building 2 new reactors now. I look forward to them coming online. I like low cost electricity that doesn't kill fish and birds or strip the land of all life.

Next generation needs to be trained as demolishers

[fritsd]

Here's one (non-sensational but costly) issue that's known but little discussed: it is relevant for the former nuclear power plant of Dodewaard in the Netherlands:

If you have to wait some 40-60 years for the iodine and some of the cesium and strontium to decay, it means that:

• * You have to guard the derelict plant for 40-60 years so that Evil Terrists(TM) and neighbourhood kids don't take bits of concrete to the local shopping mall, and
• * After 40 years, you have to resurrect a teaching institute to teach a new crop of nuclear decommission engineers how to carry out the plans from 40 years ago how to demolish it safely. That's also an added cost that is probably not really accounted for beforehand.