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Decommissioning costs are generally around a few hundred million $ - not more than 10% of the capital costs generally [1]. And there are very strict regulation
by rwcarlsen 11y ago
Decommissioning costs are generally around a few hundred million $ - not more than 10% of the capital costs generally [1]. And there are very strict regulations around it - many firms are required to have a trust or other type of fund built up during operation of the facility in advance of final shutdown and decommissioning. And as others have stated, uranium price is very small part of total nuclear energy cost.
[1] http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/decommissioning.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/de...
- skrause 11y agoThe German utilities just had to set aside around 35 billion dollars to decommission just about 10 nuclear power plants: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-16/why-germany-s-nuclear-power-exit-is-causing-havoc-for-utilities http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-16/why-german... With that in mind I honestly don't believe the "few hundred million $".
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoI wonder where all the money will go? See my previous comment about a decommissioned plant, elsewhere in this topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10457453 The reactor vessel is long gone. What remains on site is spent fuel, but there's nowhere to move that to. Cost was perhaps $0.23 billion but that's an approximate figure. Still, nowhere near the $3.5 billion per plant that German utilities have set aside.