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In the US operators pay into a fund for decommissioning. >No nuclear power plant has ever been fully decommissioned. There have been 10 plants in the US that

by ch4s3 4y ago

In the US operators pay into a fund for decommissioning. >No nuclear power plant has ever been fully decommissioned. There have been 10 plants in the US that have been fully decommissioned[1]. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33792 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33792

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
"fully decommissioned" by some somewhat unintuitive definitions: > The DOE was required by contract and statute to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and GTCC waste by January 31, 1998. To date, the DOE has not removed any spent fuel or GTCC waste from the CY site, and it is unknown when it will. The current 'plan' is for the companies looking after the waste on the original site to sue the government every few years to get paid for looking after the waste. http://connyankee.com/ http://connyankee.com/
- ch4s3 4y ago
  The casks are safe where they are and should hold safely for at least 90 years according tot he notoriously conservative NRC. They should be moved, and congress needs to get its shit together, I agree. We really need to get deep storage unstuck from the Yucca Mountain issue, but I think this still counts as decommissioned.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Why do we need to get deep storage unstuck? Putting the waste in dry casks is cheaper.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      There are radionuclides in those casks with half-lives of 200,000 years - much longer than human civilisation, and much longer still than the lifetime of a human writing system. We don't even know how to make a label that will make sense in 200,000 years. This attitude only makes sense if one's view is that humanity isn't going to last more than 10,000 years. Unless we can find a way of rendering nuclear waste safe, then we have to find a way of making it so inaccessible that a future civilisation is unlikely to come across it by accident, and so secure that even a major earthquake won't cause it to leak into the environment. Storing this stuff in metal tins on the surface isn't even a gesture at a solution.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        I sort of mostly agree. Long term deep storage is nice because with a good design, we can pretty much set and forget. Most LLFPs aren't actually very dangerous as they don't emit gamma rays, but Tc-99 and I-129 are pretty nasty stuff. we could probably reprocess those into Ru and throw the rest of it into a deep geologically stable hole. Any society in 10k years that could find the stuff will be advanced enough to avoid or rebury it. As long as we don't store anything highly bioavailable near water, it should be fine. By 10k years from now the amount of radiation actually being released will be miniscule. But, I'm all for a big deep hole.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        No, the attitude makes sense because of the time value of money. At any point, if interest rates aren't pretty much exactly zero, it pays to delay burying waste. The present cost of guarding it at the surface is < the cost of burying it now. If, at any time, the interest rates do drop to zero and stay there, it can be buried then. The only real argument against this is that the waste ceases to be self-protecting from "amateur" diversion of plutonium in about 300 years, which could greatly increase the cost of guarding. But that's no justification for burying it now. Waiting also reduces the thermal output from fission products, which reduces heat buildup in the repository, at least a bit. And it would allow the waste to be reprocessed (and more easily) if that (perhaps unexpectedly) becomes appropriate. It would also allow time for other disposal methods, such as launching into space, to become competitive. How cheap will the descendants of SpaceX's launchers be in 300 years? I think there may have been an argument for rapidly burying waste during the cold war, where surface waste could be volatilized by a direct H bomb strike, causing enhanced local long term fallout. That's more an argument against nuclear power itself, though, as NPPs could also be disrupted by direct strikes.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        > "amateur" diversion This is always a funny topic when people wax philosophical about dirty bombs as though you wouldn't get cooked trying to open a cask.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  this is exactly the idealism thats causing problems -the energy futures in germany reaches the highest price in recorded history, the industry is being decimated and it's importing gas from a tyran that has started a war on Gemany's doorstep. Without Europe's gas dollars he would not be able to fund it's millatry and 12 million ukranians would never become homeless refugees. Meanwhile you are complaining about waste that sitting sealed and monitored, and is not hurting anyone.
  - Brometheus 4y ago
    No, what's creating the problems is the gas and coal lobby that dug into the conserveratives (CDU) and social democrats (SPD) to prevent the Energiewende from completion by creating burocratic and economical hurdles. For example, it was forbidden to have more than 50GW installed capacity of solar. By Law. oh and also destroying the industries building the solar panels, therefore losing the entire market to China…
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    I think that misses the point. If you reckon it's OK to leave waste lying around, especially in constrained economic and political circumstances, that's a legitimate point of view. Argue for that. But don't declare that "decommissioning" simply means something like "Do your best, and then be done with it". That's dishonest (I'm not accusing you personally of any dishonesty). If "decommissioning" doesn't mean complete reversal of all harmful results of the operation of a plant, then we need a new word that does mean that.
    - teakettle42 4y ago
      That’s not what decommissioning means and what you’re asking for is childishly ridiculous. How, by your definition, would you decommission the coal and gas plants we’ve been running for forty years while people like yourself threw ignorant tantrums over nuclear? How would you “reverse all harmful results of the operation of a plant”? How are you going to recapture all the pollution they dumped into our air, exactly?
- DennisP 4y ago
  The US government made nuclear plants pay into a fund for long-term waste storage. Last I saw, that fund had accumulated over $40 billion. But since the Yucca Mountain facility was canceled, the government never provided the waste storage they were charging for. It's not surprising if nuclear operators don't want to pay twice.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Not only that, congress mandated that Yucca Mountain is the only allowable site, and has also prevented its use…
denton-scratch 4y ago
> There have been 10 plants in the US that have been fully decommissioned According to your link, there are 10 plants that have achieved "DECON status": that is, the spent fuel and machinery have been removed from the site (presumably to some other site). I'm sorry, but that's a cop-out: it's cheating to say you've decommissioned a site, when what you've really done is transport the entire site, including topsoil, to a new location. That's like saying your plastics are green, because when they are no longer wanted they are all shipped to Indonesia. And apparently at least some of those "decommissioned" sites still have spent fuel stored on-site; I don't see how a site with spent fuel can be considered to have been returned to "greenfield" condition.
- knorker 4y ago
  No coal plant has ever been decommissioned either, because its radioactive waste, and other waste, is now in the air we all breathe. Same with solar. Spent solar panels don't go nowhere. No other plant either.

by ch4s3 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

"fully decommissioned" by some somewhat unintuitive definitions: > The DOE was required by contract and statute to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and GTCC waste by January 31, 1998. To date, the DOE has not removed any spent fuel or GTCC waste from the CY site, and it is unknown when it will. The current 'plan' is for the companies looking after the waste on the original site to sue the government every few years to get paid for looking after the waste. http://connyankee.com/ http://connyankee.com/

ch4s3 4y ago
The casks are safe where they are and should hold safely for at least 90 years according tot he notoriously conservative NRC. They should be moved, and congress needs to get its shit together, I agree. We really need to get deep storage unstuck from the Yucca Mountain issue, but I think this still counts as decommissioned.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Why do we need to get deep storage unstuck? Putting the waste in dry casks is cheaper.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    There are radionuclides in those casks with half-lives of 200,000 years - much longer than human civilisation, and much longer still than the lifetime of a human writing system. We don't even know how to make a label that will make sense in 200,000 years. This attitude only makes sense if one's view is that humanity isn't going to last more than 10,000 years. Unless we can find a way of rendering nuclear waste safe, then we have to find a way of making it so inaccessible that a future civilisation is unlikely to come across it by accident, and so secure that even a major earthquake won't cause it to leak into the environment. Storing this stuff in metal tins on the surface isn't even a gesture at a solution.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      I sort of mostly agree. Long term deep storage is nice because with a good design, we can pretty much set and forget. Most LLFPs aren't actually very dangerous as they don't emit gamma rays, but Tc-99 and I-129 are pretty nasty stuff. we could probably reprocess those into Ru and throw the rest of it into a deep geologically stable hole. Any society in 10k years that could find the stuff will be advanced enough to avoid or rebury it. As long as we don't store anything highly bioavailable near water, it should be fine. By 10k years from now the amount of radiation actually being released will be miniscule. But, I'm all for a big deep hole.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      No, the attitude makes sense because of the time value of money. At any point, if interest rates aren't pretty much exactly zero, it pays to delay burying waste. The present cost of guarding it at the surface is < the cost of burying it now. If, at any time, the interest rates do drop to zero and stay there, it can be buried then. The only real argument against this is that the waste ceases to be self-protecting from "amateur" diversion of plutonium in about 300 years, which could greatly increase the cost of guarding. But that's no justification for burying it now. Waiting also reduces the thermal output from fission products, which reduces heat buildup in the repository, at least a bit. And it would allow the waste to be reprocessed (and more easily) if that (perhaps unexpectedly) becomes appropriate. It would also allow time for other disposal methods, such as launching into space, to become competitive. How cheap will the descendants of SpaceX's launchers be in 300 years? I think there may have been an argument for rapidly burying waste during the cold war, where surface waste could be volatilized by a direct H bomb strike, causing enhanced local long term fallout. That's more an argument against nuclear power itself, though, as NPPs could also be disrupted by direct strikes.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        > "amateur" diversion This is always a funny topic when people wax philosophical about dirty bombs as though you wouldn't get cooked trying to open a cask.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
this is exactly the idealism thats causing problems -the energy futures in germany reaches the highest price in recorded history, the industry is being decimated and it's importing gas from a tyran that has started a war on Gemany's doorstep. Without Europe's gas dollars he would not be able to fund it's millatry and 12 million ukranians would never become homeless refugees. Meanwhile you are complaining about waste that sitting sealed and monitored, and is not hurting anyone.
- Brometheus 4y ago
  No, what's creating the problems is the gas and coal lobby that dug into the conserveratives (CDU) and social democrats (SPD) to prevent the Energiewende from completion by creating burocratic and economical hurdles. For example, it was forbidden to have more than 50GW installed capacity of solar. By Law. oh and also destroying the industries building the solar panels, therefore losing the entire market to China…
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  I think that misses the point. If you reckon it's OK to leave waste lying around, especially in constrained economic and political circumstances, that's a legitimate point of view. Argue for that. But don't declare that "decommissioning" simply means something like "Do your best, and then be done with it". That's dishonest (I'm not accusing you personally of any dishonesty). If "decommissioning" doesn't mean complete reversal of all harmful results of the operation of a plant, then we need a new word that does mean that.
  - teakettle42 4y ago
    That’s not what decommissioning means and what you’re asking for is childishly ridiculous. How, by your definition, would you decommission the coal and gas plants we’ve been running for forty years while people like yourself threw ignorant tantrums over nuclear? How would you “reverse all harmful results of the operation of a plant”? How are you going to recapture all the pollution they dumped into our air, exactly?
DennisP 4y ago
The US government made nuclear plants pay into a fund for long-term waste storage. Last I saw, that fund had accumulated over $40 billion. But since the Yucca Mountain facility was canceled, the government never provided the waste storage they were charging for. It's not surprising if nuclear operators don't want to pay twice.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Not only that, congress mandated that Yucca Mountain is the only allowable site, and has also prevented its use…

denton-scratch 4y ago

> There have been 10 plants in the US that have been fully decommissioned According to your link, there are 10 plants that have achieved "DECON status": that is, the spent fuel and machinery have been removed from the site (presumably to some other site). I'm sorry, but that's a cop-out: it's cheating to say you've decommissioned a site, when what you've really done is transport the entire site, including topsoil, to a new location. That's like saying your plastics are green, because when they are no longer wanted they are all shipped to Indonesia. And apparently at least some of those "decommissioned" sites still have spent fuel stored on-site; I don't see how a site with spent fuel can be considered to have been returned to "greenfield" condition.

knorker 4y ago
No coal plant has ever been decommissioned either, because its radioactive waste, and other waste, is now in the air we all breathe. Same with solar. Spent solar panels don't go nowhere. No other plant either.