Total cost of closing down nuclear sites rises to £73bn
The cost of decommissioning Britain's ageing nuclear power sites has risen from an estimated £61bn in 2005 to £73bn as the "start-stop" nature of the work is creating significant uncertainty for contractors, Whitehall's value-for-money watchdog reveals today.
The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) into the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will prove particularly uneasy reading for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who earlier this month gave the green light to a new generation of nuclear power stations - albeit that none will be built in Scotland because of the anti-nuclear stance adopted by the Scottish Government.
As well as reporting to the UK Government via the Department for Business, the authority also reports to Scottish ministers who agree its strategy and plans for sites in Scotland. By December 2007, 14 of 19 facilities across Britain had already shut down and were in the process of being decommissioned, which includes cleaning up the sites.
The NAO says that while the authority had made progress, it faces "significant challenges" if it is to make a step-change in decommissioning Britain's nuclear sites, which include the largest at Sellafield, 11 Magnox power stations such as Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway and Hunterston A in Ayrshire, and four research reactor sites, including Dounreay on the north-east coast of Scotland.
Estimated costs of decommissioning "continue to rise rapidly", says the report, even for the most imminent of work, which might have been expected to have stabilised.
The report adds: "Progress at some decommissioning sites has been hampered by changes at short notice to funds available, bringing uncertainty for sites and lessening value for money.
The authority needs to develop its approach to contracting for decommissioning, if it is to secure value-for-money in the long run for the taxpayer."
The report found that the nature and scale of the decommissioning task inherited by the authority in 2005 was highly uncertain. Many of the authority's sites had not been designed with decommissioning in mind. Record-keeping, particularly in the early days of nuclear development, had not always been sufficiently detailed to inform decommissioning several decades later.
The NAO found that the authority had put a lot of work into defining what needed to be done but noted how plans for the decommissioning of individual sites had gone through a number of changes with cost estimates having "increased significantly".
"In 2007, the authority estimated that the undiscounted cost of decommissioning its 19 sites over a 100-year period was £61bn and that it would cost a further £12bn to run operating sites to the end of their commercial life.
This total lifetime cost of £73bn was almost £12bn - 18% - higher than the 2005 estimate," explains the report, which stresses how estimating decommissioning costs had to be interpreted with great caution. However, the 2007 estimate is almost £17bn or 30% higher than that given in 2003.
Sellafield is expected to cost around £46bn, some 63% of the total lifetime costs, with Dounreay due to be the next largest at around £4bn or 5%.
The report notes that the Scottish Government's policy is to support "interim near-site surface storage of higher-
activity radioactive wastes".
There was a repository for disposing of low-level waste, such as protective clothing, near Drigg in Cumbria and there were plans for a facility at Dounreay to take low-level waste from the Caithness site.
The Dounreay Cementation Plant was shut down in September 2005 after there was a spillage of cement powder and radioactive liquid. The plant is due to reopen this spring.
The report says that the authority intended to focus its decommissioning resources increasingly on the high-
hazard facilities at Sellafield and Dounreay.
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Posted by: Wardog, Buckie on 12:36am Wed 30 Jan 08
IS ANYONE surprised?
Wait and see a whole slew of these types of stories when they finally start to build the new stations too.....the private contractors will start to squeal and the UK Government will be [bold]over a barrel[/bold] because it backed Nuclear as it's key 'secure' & 'clean' energy stream.
Hopefully Scotland will have atleast Fiscal Autonomy by then and will be able to ensure that our tax Payers Money doesn't get spent subsidising this technology anymore.
IS ANYONE surprised?
Wait and see a whole slew of these types of stories when they finally start to build the new stations too.....the private contractors will start to squeal and the UK Government will be
over a barrel because it backed Nuclear as it's key 'secure' & 'clean' energy stream.
Hopefully Scotland will have atleast Fiscal Autonomy by then and will be able to ensure that our tax Payers Money doesn't get spent subsidising this technology anymore.
Posted by: John J. Sheridan, Z'ha'dum on 12:37am Wed 30 Jan 08
Great.....now lets build some more of the bloody things.
Come out Neil 9%....as the west ends representative of The Spacing Guild, we need your particular brand of future speak to put things in perspective.
"Too cheap to meter.....", my bahooky
Great.....now lets build some more of the bloody things.
Come out Neil 9%....as the west ends representative of The Spacing Guild, we need your particular brand of future speak to put things in perspective.
"Too cheap to meter.....", my bahooky
Posted by: redc;liffe62, brisbane on hols, uranium supplier up the road on 4:12am Wed 30 Jan 08
here we are arguing over the merits of a 0.5bn tram system, yet the decommissioning costs are 73bn, of which an undisclosed percentage involves scotland. reasonable to assume about 30bn?
60 times what the trams cost. whatever it comes in at, it will be another financial basket case ready to happen.
with our annual "budget" at 33bn, can we have some clear guidelines and statements to find out if good ol' gordon brown and britain pty ltd will pay for it. this makes northern rock look like a walk in the park, as there is no return for the decommissioning investment.
was this budgeted as a cost prior to now or has it just materialised, a bit like mccrones figures on oil wealth after 30 years of denial/avoidance?
perhaps the money that was to be spent on more boys toys with nuclear capability can be used to clean up the mess that they have already made. even then, doing rough arithmetic i do not think that the sum involved would cover it.
it also sounds like a great deal of money to do this, presumably turning the raes into radiocactive free green belt areas, so perhaps we can do a botch job without putting us all at risk, physically and financially for a whole lot less.
i can feel a whiff of a story here.... that scotland cannot afford to fix this if it goes its own way, so best to stay with the u.k. who will eventually foot the bill. any thoughts out there?
here we are arguing over the merits of a 0.5bn tram system, yet the decommissioning costs are 73bn, of which an undisclosed percentage involves scotland. reasonable to assume about 30bn?
60 times what the trams cost. whatever it comes in at, it will be another financial basket case ready to happen.
with our annual "budget" at 33bn, can we have some clear guidelines and statements to find out if good ol' gordon brown and britain pty ltd will pay for it. this makes northern rock look like a walk in the park, as there is no return for the decommissioning investment.
was this budgeted as a cost prior to now or has it just materialised, a bit like mccrones figures on oil wealth after 30 years of denial/avoidance?
perhaps the money that was to be spent on more boys toys with nuclear capability can be used to clean up the mess that they have already made. even then, doing rough arithmetic i do not think that the sum involved would cover it.
it also sounds like a great deal of money to do this, presumably turning the raes into radiocactive free green belt areas, so perhaps we can do a botch job without putting us all at risk, physically and financially for a whole lot less.
i can feel a whiff of a story here.... that scotland cannot afford to fix this if it goes its own way, so best to stay with the u.k. who will eventually foot the bill. any thoughts out there?
Posted by: JohnJ, Edinburgh on 8:32am Wed 30 Jan 08
Can anyone out there do a calculation on the £73 billion total and show it as x pence per Megawatt generated (or how much per unit on our meters) ?
That would give us some idea of the real cost of nuclear power as the numbers are just too huge to mean anything to most of us.
Can anyone out there do a calculation on the £73 billion total and show it as x pence per Megawatt generated (or how much per unit on our meters) ?
That would give us some idea of the real cost of nuclear power as the numbers are just too huge to mean anything to most of us.
Posted by: Alastair McIntosh, Govan on 8:45am Wed 30 Jan 08
I have never been strongly opposed to nuclear power - a product of a science education in the sixties and seventies when it was all very exciting - and the French experience with modern reactors keeps me thinking. But these figures are really quite something. They underline, yet again, that nuclear may be the answer, but what was the question? If the question was how to satisfy ever more insatiable energy demand, then nuclear may indeed have to be part of the answer, at least while the uranium lasts. But if the question is how to live within our means, a much more important question is how to achieve energy obviation - reducing our need without cutting quality of life. That is where this £73 billion figure becomes absolutely stunning. According to National Statistics Online, there are 24.7 million households in the UK (as of 2004). If my maths at this time of the morning is right, that means that the costs of decommissioning - and that's without all the unknown costs of permanent nuclear waste storage - works out at £3,000 per household! I scratch my head. Have I really calculated right? For that money every house in Britain that needs it could be properly insulated and have a solar water heater on the roof. As buildings consume about a third of our total energy demand, and nukes provide 20% of UK electricity or 8% of total UK energy demand, then the decomissioning costs alone if spent on energy efficiency could probably have obviated the entire nuclear contribution in the first place.
The DTI's 2002 publication, "Energy Consumption in the UK" suggests how far there there is potentially to go on household energy efficiency alone. It says: "The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) provides a means of rating the energy efficiency of a dwelling and is based on estimates of space and water heating costs, with a rating of 100 to 120 indicating an extremely efficient house. Based on this system, the energy efficiency of the country’s housing stock has risen from a SAP rating of about 12 in 1970 to approaching 45 or so in 2000." To retro-fit housing to a high standard would not only obviate demand, it would also permanently make every householder better off with the poor relatively speaking gaining most.
In short, this is just what the Cassandras of Greenpeace, FOE and SCRAM have always said ... but only now are the figures really vindicating them. Even the estimated £30 billion cost of the present Trident system over its operating life (with or without decommissioning?) is small fry in the light of this scunner.
Obviate energy in all sectors, develop offshore renewables and treat the Arabs with a little bit of dignity so that we can start piping in their solar energy rather than their oil ... that's what I say.
I have never been strongly opposed to nuclear power - a product of a science education in the sixties and seventies when it was all very exciting - and the French experience with modern reactors keeps me thinking. But these figures are really quite something. They underline, yet again, that nuclear may be the answer, but what was the question? If the question was how to satisfy ever more insatiable energy demand, then nuclear may indeed have to be part of the answer, at least while the uranium lasts. But if the question is how to live within our means, a much more important question is how to achieve energy obviation - reducing our need without cutting quality of life. That is where this £73 billion figure becomes absolutely stunning. According to National Statistics Online, there are 24.7 million households in the UK (as of 2004). If my maths at this time of the morning is right, that means that the costs of decommissioning - and that's without all the unknown costs of permanent nuclear waste storage - works out at £3,000 per household! I scratch my head. Have I really calculated right? For that money every house in Britain that needs it could be properly insulated and have a solar water heater on the roof. As buildings consume about a third of our total energy demand, and nukes provide 20% of UK electricity or 8% of total UK energy demand, then the decomissioning costs alone if spent on energy efficiency could probably have obviated the entire nuclear contribution in the first place.
The DTI's 2002 publication, "Energy Consumption in the UK" suggests how far there there is potentially to go on household energy efficiency alone. It says: "The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) provides a means of rating the energy efficiency of a dwelling and is based on estimates of space and water heating costs, with a rating of 100 to 120 indicating an extremely efficient house. Based on this system, the energy efficiency of the country’s housing stock has risen from a SAP rating of about 12 in 1970 to approaching 45 or so in 2000." To retro-fit housing to a high standard would not only obviate demand, it would also permanently make every householder better off with the poor relatively speaking gaining most.
In short, this is just what the Cassandras of Greenpeace, FOE and SCRAM have always said ... but only now are the figures really vindicating them. Even the estimated £30 billion cost of the present Trident system over its operating life (with or without decommissioning?) is small fry in the light of this scunner.
Obviate energy in all sectors, develop offshore renewables and treat the Arabs with a little bit of dignity so that we can start piping in their solar energy rather than their oil ... that's what I say.
Posted by: Ronald, Glasgow on 10:07am Wed 30 Jan 08
Where is Brian Wilson , that NEW LABOUR slavering, sycophantic proponent for the nuclear industry when horendous figures like this come out?
Where is Brian Wilson , that NEW LABOUR slavering, sycophantic proponent for the nuclear industry when horendous figures like this come out?
Posted by: Martin Graham on 10:12am Wed 30 Jan 08
I don't see how you can be against climate change and against nuclear power at the same time.
I agree that renewable energy has a large contribution to make so we can reduce our CO2 emissions.
But there is no source of renewable power that is predictable in its output in the way of a conventional or a nuclear power station.
The only exceptions are geothermal energy, which the geology of the British Isles (like most of the planet) would appear to make unworkable, and tidal power, which is an entirely unproven technology, and in any case depends on defacing large sections of coastline.
Nuclear is reliable, predictable and emits no CO2.
Yes, it is expensive, but so are off shore wind farms. At least with some nuclear generating capacity we won't have to turn off the lights when the wind dies down.
Certain technologies are expensive, but worth the cost because they benefit the environment. This includes Nuclear.
I don't see how you can be against climate change and against nuclear power at the same time.
I agree that renewable energy has a large contribution to make so we can reduce our CO2 emissions.
But there is no source of renewable power that is predictable in its output in the way of a conventional or a nuclear power station.
The only exceptions are geothermal energy, which the geology of the British Isles (like most of the planet) would appear to make unworkable, and tidal power, which is an entirely unproven technology, and in any case depends on defacing large sections of coastline.
Nuclear is reliable, predictable and emits no CO2.
Yes, it is expensive, but so are off shore wind farms. At least with some nuclear generating capacity we won't have to turn off the lights when the wind dies down.
Certain technologies are expensive, but worth the cost because they benefit the environment. This includes Nuclear.
Posted by: Neil, Aberdeenshire on 10:28am Wed 30 Jan 08
[italic]The[/italic] most predictable thing on this planet is the tides in our sea and oceans. We only need to spend a fraction of this money to perfect the technology which has already been developed to harness the energy of the tidal flows around our coast and we can be completely self-sufficient in truly renewable zero-carbon energy.
Nuclear power? No Thanks!
The most predictable thing on this planet is the tides in our sea and oceans. We only need to spend a fraction of this money to perfect the technology which has already been developed to harness the energy of the tidal flows around our coast and we can be completely self-sufficient in truly renewable zero-carbon energy.
Nuclear power? No Thanks!
Posted by: martin, edinburgh on 10:35am Wed 30 Jan 08
£73 bn over 100 years? £730 million a year only! To protect british jobs and a strategic british industry at the forefront of power generation with the capacity to export our knowhow gloablly! This isn't a burden, it's an investment people
I appreciate some greenies might not see it this way :-)
£73 bn over 100 years? £730 million a year only! To protect british jobs and a strategic british industry at the forefront of power generation with the capacity to export our knowhow gloablly! This isn't a burden, it's an investment people
I appreciate some greenies might not see it this way :-)
Posted by: Neil 9% Growth, Glasgow on 11:07am Wed 30 Jan 08
Give a government department an unlimited budget but don't be surprised if they spend it.
We are told this increase is due to [quote]the "start-stop" nature of the work is creating significant uncertainty for contractors[/quote] , which is code for government departments changing their minds half way through the projects & wanting things done over, time after time. This is a more extreme version of how we get from the last Forth Bridge costing £300 in current money & the next one being £4 billion.
Readers may remember a post a few days ago from somebody who had been involved in a decommissioning explaining how they had had to cart in limestone chips since granite was too radioactive naturally & would have been classed as low level waste. Any programme which defines all of Aberdeenshire as low level nuclear waste dangerous to humani life is clearly nonsense.
The padding is evident in previous acknowledgements that this decommissioning cost includes running the reactors but without counting the sales of electricity. This is mentioned here [quote]and that it would cost a further £12bn to run operating sites to the end of their commercial life.[/quote] This is the economics of the madhouse. By this definition the cost of clearing the streets of empty pizza boxes includes the running costs (but not profits) of every pizza shop in Glasgow.
Beyond that we should remember that at least half of this cost actually relates to military work.
Beyond that we should remember that 50s & 60s reactors were not built with decommisioning in mind - modern ones are & will cost very little. The comparison here is with preventing any new industrial jobs being created in Scotland because there is Victorian industrial chrome in the ground on the route of the new glasgow motorway.
But beyond even that the sensible way to decommission a reactor is to leave it for 50 years until the radioctivity is down to safe levels, while building a new reactor at the same site thus keeping them both within the same security cordon.
If we did it sensibly we could decomission for somewher between a 10th & a 1,000th of this price. The hysterical anti-nuclear lobby have ensured that the civil service have been deliberately encouraged to make decommissioning as expensive as humanly possible & the service have been more than equal to the challenge.
Give a government department an unlimited budget but don't be surprised if they spend it.
We are told this increase is due to
the "start-stop" nature of the work is creating significant uncertainty for contractors
, which is code for government departments changing their minds half way through the projects & wanting things done over, time after time. This is a more extreme version of how we get from the last Forth Bridge costing £300 in current money & the next one being £4 billion.
Readers may remember a post a few days ago from somebody who had been involved in a decommissioning explaining how they had had to cart in limestone chips since granite was too radioactive naturally & would have been classed as low level waste. Any programme which defines all of Aberdeenshire as low level nuclear waste dangerous to humani life is clearly nonsense.
The padding is evident in previous acknowledgements that this decommissioning cost includes running the reactors but without counting the sales of electricity. This is mentioned here
and that it would cost a further £12bn to run operating sites to the end of their commercial life.
This is the economics of the madhouse. By this definition the cost of clearing the streets of empty pizza boxes includes the running costs (but not profits) of every pizza shop in Glasgow.
Beyond that we should remember that at least half of this cost actually relates to military work.
Beyond that we should remember that 50s & 60s reactors were not built with decommisioning in mind - modern ones are & will cost very little. The comparison here is with preventing any new industrial jobs being created in Scotland because there is Victorian industrial chrome in the ground on the route of the new glasgow motorway.
But beyond even that the sensible way to decommission a reactor is to leave it for 50 years until the radioctivity is down to safe levels, while building a new reactor at the same site thus keeping them both within the same security cordon.
If we did it sensibly we could decomission for somewher between a 10th & a 1,000th of this price. The hysterical anti-nuclear lobby have ensured that the civil service have been deliberately encouraged to make decommissioning as expensive as humanly possible & the service have been more than equal to the challenge.
Posted by: David Alexander on 11:20am Wed 30 Jan 08
Neil 9%
[quote]If we did it sensibly we could decomission for somewhere between a 10th & a 1,000th of this price.[/quote]
Neil, you owe me a new keyboard as I've just sprayed my current one with coffee!
Best line for a [italic]long[/italic] time.
Thanks!
Neil 9%
If we did it sensibly we could decomission for somewhere between a 10th & a 1,000th of this price.
Neil, you owe me a new keyboard as I've just sprayed my current one with coffee!
Best line for a
long time.
Thanks!
Posted by: jomellon, Lodève, France on 12:01pm Wed 30 Jan 08
@ martin, edinburgh on 10:35am today
> £73 bn over 100 years?
> ...investment
But the reactors only have a life of about 40 years, and the fuel has a half life of X thousand years.... so the final, final bill will still be being paid a long long time from now: but Hunterston goes off line in a year or two.
This isnt investment, it is selling birthrights for a very small bowl of soup. We use the electricity produced to keep TVs on standby because it is so "cheap".
@ martin, edinburgh on 10:35am today
> £73 bn over 100 years?
> ...investment
But the reactors only have a life of about 40 years, and the fuel has a half life of X thousand years.... so the final, final bill will still be being paid a long long time from now: but Hunterston goes off line in a year or two.
This isnt investment, it is selling birthrights for a very small bowl of soup. We use the electricity produced to keep TVs on standby because it is so "cheap".
Posted by: martin, edinburgh on 12:30pm Wed 30 Jan 08
[quote][bold]jomellon[/bold] wrote:
@ martin, edinburgh on 10:35am today > £73 bn over 100 years? > ...investment But the reactors only have a life of about 40 years, and the fuel has a half life of X thousand years.... so the final, final bill will still be being paid a long long time from now: but Hunterston goes off line in a year or two. This isnt investment, it is selling birthrights for a very small bowl of soup. We use the electricity produced to keep TVs on standby because it is so "cheap".[/quote] yes, but british firms and workers can be decommissioning for far longer than 40 years, supporting the country if we get the expertise first!
and the ten thousand years half-life is a bunch of horse-sh*t. Anything with that long a half-life is so unradioactive it's not worth bothering with. Generally, the shorter a half-life, the more dangerous something is as it's firing out its energy much more quickly so it's the strontium-90s and the caesium-137s we have to watch out for. In contrast, something with a scary-sounding infinite halflife never produces radiation. So long-term storage is not a problem, if you can hold it for the first 100 years, the next 9900 are a doddle.
jomellon wrote:
@ martin, edinburgh on 10:35am today > £73 bn over 100 years? > ...investment But the reactors only have a life of about 40 years, and the fuel has a half life of X thousand years.... so the final, final bill will still be being paid a long long time from now: but Hunterston goes off line in a year or two. This isnt investment, it is selling birthrights for a very small bowl of soup. We use the electricity produced to keep TVs on standby because it is so "cheap".
yes, but british firms and workers can be decommissioning for far longer than 40 years, supporting the country if we get the expertise first!
and the ten thousand years half-life is a bunch of horse-sh*t. Anything with that long a half-life is so unradioactive it's not worth bothering with. Generally, the shorter a half-life, the more dangerous something is as it's firing out its energy much more quickly so it's the strontium-90s and the caesium-137s we have to watch out for. In contrast, something with a scary-sounding infinite halflife never produces radiation. So long-term storage is not a problem, if you can hold it for the first 100 years, the next 9900 are a doddle.
Posted by: JohnJ, Edinburgh on 1:28pm Wed 30 Jan 08
When radioactive substances decay they often produce lower level radioactive materials, for example Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,400 years, as it decays Uranium 235 is generated with a half-life of about 700,000 years.
Safe levels are usually reached after 10 to 20 half lives so we will have to look after power station residue for many many years.
When radioactive substances decay they often produce lower level radioactive materials, for example Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,400 years, as it decays Uranium 235 is generated with a half-life of about 700,000 years.
Safe levels are usually reached after 10 to 20 half lives so we will have to look after power station residue for many many years.
Posted by: Neil 9% Growth, Glasgow on 2:17pm Wed 30 Jan 08
Wrong because plutonium & uranium are fuels. They do not have to be stored. The real reactor waste, known as actinides, have far shorter half lives & are thus down to safe levels in 50 years.
Even actinides do not fully deserve to be classed as waste since the very rare isotopes they make up often have serious medical & scientific uses & can be worth their weight in gold, literally.
It is one of the incongruities of the eco mob that, while on the one hand they say "waste" is dangerous & a reason for not going nuclear, on the other hand they are the most strongly insistent that waste stores should be accessible because the waste they don't want to burden future generstions (well the next 50 years) with may be of value to those generations.
I think God shows a real lack of environmental awareness is his placing all that long lived uranium lying around in the ground in the first place. Did He have no concern for future generations?
Wrong because plutonium & uranium are fuels. They do not have to be stored. The real reactor waste, known as actinides, have far shorter half lives & are thus down to safe levels in 50 years.
Even actinides do not fully deserve to be classed as waste since the very rare isotopes they make up often have serious medical & scientific uses & can be worth their weight in gold, literally.
It is one of the incongruities of the eco mob that, while on the one hand they say "waste" is dangerous & a reason for not going nuclear, on the other hand they are the most strongly insistent that waste stores should be accessible because the waste they don't want to burden future generstions (well the next 50 years) with may be of value to those generations.
I think God shows a real lack of environmental awareness is his placing all that long lived uranium lying around in the ground in the first place. Did He have no concern for future generations?
Posted by: Economic Migrant, Darkest Oxfordshire on 5:53pm Wed 30 Jan 08
[quote]Wrong because plutonium & uranium are fuels. They do not have to be stored. The real reactor waste, known as actinides, have far shorter half lives & are thus down to safe levels in 50 years.
[/quote]
Plutonium & uranium [bold]are[/bold] actinides!
[bold]Even actinides do not fully deserve to be classed as waste since the very rare isotopes they make up often have serious medical & scientific uses & can be worth their weight in gold, literally.[/bold]
The vast majority of medical isotopes have short half lives such as Iodine-131 and there are much better ways of getting them than from nuclear waste. Some nuclear waste may be recycled into radioisotopes for scientific or industrial use but the vast majority is worthless waste which must be disposed of.
Wrong because plutonium & uranium are fuels. They do not have to be stored. The real reactor waste, known as actinides, have far shorter half lives & are thus down to safe levels in 50 years.
Plutonium & uranium
are actinides!
Even actinides do not fully deserve to be classed as waste since the very rare isotopes they make up often have serious medical & scientific uses & can be worth their weight in gold, literally.
The vast majority of medical isotopes have short half lives such as Iodine-131 and there are much better ways of getting them than from nuclear waste. Some nuclear waste may be recycled into radioisotopes for scientific or industrial use but the vast majority is worthless waste which must be disposed of.
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