Antinuclear

USA cannot afford the cost of closing down old nuclear reactors

 The cost is projected at $400 million to $1 billion per reactor, which in some cases is more than what it cost to build the plants in the 1960s and ’70s.

As Reactors Age, the Money to Close Them Lags NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD March 20, 2012 WASHINGTON — 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.
Decommissioning a reactor is a painstaking and expensive process that
involves taking down huge structures and transporting the radioactive
materials to the few sites around the country that can bury them. The
cost is projected at $400 million to $1 billion per reactor, which in
some cases is more than what it cost to build the plants in the 1960s
and ’70s.

Mothballing the plants makes hundreds of acres of prime industrial
land unavailable for decades and leaves open the possibility that
radioactive contamination in the structures could spread. While the
radioactivity levels decline over time, many communities worry about
safe oversight.

Bills that once seemed far into the future may be coming due. The
license for Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt., at 40 the nation’s oldest
reactor, expires on Wednesday, for example. And while the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission has granted its owner, Entergy, a new 20-year
permit, the State of Vermont is trying to close the plant.

In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has vowed to force the two operating
reactors at another Entergy plant, Indian Point, 35 miles north of
Midtown Manhattan, to shut down when their licenses expire in 2013 and
2015 by denying them state environmental permits.

Entergy is at least $90 million short of the projected $560 million
cost of dismantling Vermont Yankee; the company is at least $500
million short of the $1.5 billion estimated cost of dismantling Indian
Point 2 and 3.
The shortfall raises the possibility that Vermont could tend one
sleeping reactor for decades while New York oversees three; Unit 1 ,
another reactor at Indian Point, shut down in 1974 and has yet to be
dismantled.

Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman is uneasy about the
prospect of a 60-year wait.

“These facilities should be cleaned up, and their footprints reduced
as much as possible so that these areas can be returned to other
productive uses within the community,” the chairman, Gregory B.
Jaczko, said recently.

Gil C. Quiniones, the president and chief executive of the New York
Power Authority, a state utility that sold Indian Point 3 to Entergy
in 2000, called Entergy’s failure to plan for or finance the
decommissioning of Indian Point in real time “stunningly
irresponsible.”
“Delaying action for 60 years — when Entergy might no longer even
exist — is offensive to the communities of Westchester County and the
people of New York,” he said. ….
Of the 20 reactors that lack the money for swift deconstruction, the
owners hope that license renewals from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission will make the problem go away….. Compounding the worries
about radioactive materials, the nation still lacks a permanent
repository for spent nuclear fuel after decades of jockeying by
politicians who sought to bar it from their backyards. So the fuel at
the sleeping reactors will remain on site. …
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/science/earth/as-nuclear-reactors-age-funds-to-close-them-lag.html

March 22, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized