Slashdot Mirror
Decommissioning Nuclear Plants Costing Far More Than Expected
Lasrick writes: "This article takes a look at cost estimates of nuclear power plant decommissioning from the 1980s, and how widely inaccurate they turned out to be. This is a pretty fascinating look at past articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that consistently downplayed the costs of decommissioning, for example: 'The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommission—or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plant—constructed early in the 1960s for $39 million—cost $608 million. The plant's spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in. To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year.'"
Spent fuel is 96% fuel. Combined with the depleted uranium its 99% fuel. It just takes a more efficient reactor to burn it.
Nuclear energy is orders of magnitude environmentally cleaner even than natural gas.
The main issue is nuclear regulators decided to make it economically unfeasible to to nuclear power.
Learn about it and you will find out you are wrong.
https://class.coursera.org/nuc...
The Slashdot frenzy for Thorium reactors which do not exist anywhere in the world, except as a hypothetical, is constantly astounding. It's nigh-equivalent to denying the round Earth, evolution, or global warming. Sure, they may exist "soon" if your definition of "soon" is on the order of a century. India has had a 3-stage plan for Thorium reactors since the 1950's and they're currently about halfway through that plan, according to its handlers:
"According to replies given in Q&A in the Indian Parliament on two separate occasions, 19 August 2010 and 21 March 2012, large scale thorium deployment is only to be expected “3 – 4 decades after the commercial operation of fast breeder reactors with short doubling time”.[66][31] Full exploitation of India’s domestic thorium reserves will likely not occur until after the year 2050.[67]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Nuclear power has always been a pipe dream of some sort.
Not in France.
"France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.
France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.
It is building its first Generation III reactor.
About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel."
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
For every person that died from radiation, 10000 died from coal and 100 died from hydro dam bursting.
Get your numbers straight.
Coal alone kills 200k / yr worldwide, 13k / yr in USA.
Hydro killed 170k in a single incident in China in the 70s. It kills hundreds yearly even disregarding that horrible event in China.
Nuclear is the safest energy source in the world. Look up the numbers.
Looking only at civilian nuclear accidents (including mining, transportation, processing, fuel preparation plus reactors), nuclear power have killed less than 1000 people ever, worldwide.
One, you have serious reading comprehension issues. OP claims coal produces more nuclear waste than nuclear power.
Two, that SA article has been debunked so many times, it isn't even funny. The 'research' it is based on is from 1977 and it discusses coal plants that aren't built anymore. Here, for your reading pleasure: http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
The plants are breaking down. They are used. Decommissioning Maine Yankee (900 MWe) took eight years and cost $500 million. It ran for 25 years. For Humboldt Bay(63 MWe) it is $982.3 million http://www.dra.ca.gov/general.... it ran for 13 years. Vermont Yankee (620 MWe) is expected to cost $1 billion to decommission http://cleantechnica.com/2014/... after a run of 42 years. This estimate will likely balloon. There is severe ground contamination at the plant site and perhaps beyond its perimeter as well. Crystal River (860 MWe) ran for 32 years and is estimated to cost $1.18. billion http://www.tampabay.com/news/b... This is low ball because sea level rise will make the site vulnerable to storm surge and letting it sit for 60 years will not be an option. The more contamination, the greater the decommissioning cost. Extending licenses for power plants may double or triple the decommissioning cost owing to larger contamination and for sea level plants, a rush to decommission as the storm surge risk becomes higher.