Who turned off the lights?

[Donegeal]

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, set up in April 2005 to oversee the dismantling of old nuclear power stations, said on Thursday it would cost 65 billion pounds ($122 billion) to clean up civil nuclear sites.

"The latest version of our lifetime plans -- which detail the commercial operations, decommissioning and clean up programmes of our 20 sites -- now show a total cost of 64.8 billion pounds, a net increase of 2.1 billion pounds," it said in a statement.

The NDA said the increase was due to an "improved understanding" of the costs involved in cleaning up the nuclear reprocessing plant Sellafield.

The NDA also said that current plans submitted by contractors had weaknesses that could lead to substantial changes in clean-up costs.

"For example, our sites do not currently assess risk and allocate contingency on a consistent basis," the NDA said in its annual report. "These weaknesses could lead to substantial amendments in the costs and schedule of work."

Britain's nuclear decommissioning sector is currently dominated by British Nuclear Group (BNG). The government is planning to split up the state-owned company, which is the NDA's principal customer, in a four-part sale.

U.S. engineering and construction company Fluor Corp has made an offer of 400 million pounds for BNG, depending on contracts.

EnergySolutions, a U.S. private equity-backed firm previously called Envirocare, has since said it could top Fluor's offer and believes BNG would be worth more if broken up.

Yahoo Article Link

Let me get this straight. I have read somewhere that Peak Oil is coming around 2010, and they want to spend billions of $ on removing an alternative power source?

[Kuciwalker]

You have to decommission nuclear reactors after a certain number of decades of operation, Donegeal.

[SlowwHand]

Turn out the lights
The party's over
They say that
All good things must end
Call it tonight
The party's over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again

[curtsibling]

Indeed, many of the vintage nuke plants we have in the UK are becoming too old to be safely maintained.

.

[LordShiva]

So don't turn off the lights
I don't wanna be a good guy tonight
Cause I can't read your mind
I need to know if what I'm doing is right
So don't turn off the lights
So don't turn off the lights

[SlowwHand]

What are you doing, reading an instruction manual?

[LordShiva]

Well, Enrique is, anyway.

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Indeed, many of the vintage nuke plants we have in the UK are becoming too old to be safely maintained.

.

Hmm... didn't know this. Nuclear power isn't my area of expertise.

The article didn't say anything about replacing them, just cleaning them up and geting rid of them.

[SlowwHand]

If it costs "X" amount to build, and "Y" amount to tear down, I'm curious what the real savings was for the population. Is just the fact of reduction in oil use the end consideration, even if the answer is "-Z"?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: Who turned off the lights?

Originally posted by Donegeal

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, set up in April 2005 to oversee the dismantling of old nuclear power stations, said on Thursday it would cost 65 billion pounds ($122 billion) to clean up civil nuclear sites.

"The latest version of our lifetime plans -- which detail the commercial operations, decommissioning and clean up programmes of our 20 sites -- now show a total cost of 64.8 billion pounds, a net increase of 2.1 billion pounds," it said in a statement.

The NDA said the increase was due to an "improved understanding" of the costs involved in cleaning up the nuclear reprocessing plant Sellafield.

The NDA also said that current plans submitted by contractors had weaknesses that could lead to substantial changes in clean-up costs.

"For example, our sites do not currently assess risk and allocate contingency on a consistent basis," the NDA said in its annual report. "These weaknesses could lead to substantial amendments in the costs and schedule of work."

Britain's nuclear decommissioning sector is currently dominated by British Nuclear Group (BNG). The government is planning to split up the state-owned company, which is the NDA's principal customer, in a four-part sale.

U.S. engineering and construction company Fluor Corp has made an offer of 400 million pounds for BNG, depending on contracts.

EnergySolutions, a U.S. private equity-backed firm previously called Envirocare, has since said it could top Fluor's offer and believes BNG would be worth more if broken up.

Yahoo Article Link

Let me get this straight. I have read somewhere that Peak Oil is coming around 2010, and they want to spend billions of $ on removing an alternative power source?

My dad was one of the first Registered Nuclear Engineers in California, and also sat for a while as the chairman of the American Nuclear Society's Safety Standards Committee, so I used to hear a lot about the subject from him and a lot of his co-workers when he was in the field.

Nukes get to be a real mess - deteriorated insulation on control wiring, corrosion problems, erosion of the inside of the reactor pressure vessel, wear on valve seals, actuators, etc, weakening of welds, and all that compounded by limited work time inside the containment, the difficulties of pulling wire and pipe through sealed containment penetrations, low-level and high-level exposure issues (you can't just dump a dead valve or bunch of dead wire, unless it's clean).

Then there's spent fuel and actual radwaste problems over and above the issues of maintaining the plant itself. In a lot of cases, poor operating and safety practices over the decades result in higher costs now, to make things even worse than they needed to be.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
If it costs "X" amount to build, and "Y" amount to tear down, I'm curious what the real savings was for the population. Is just the fact of reduction in oil use the end consideration, even if the answer is "-Z"?

No - nukes are somewhat like hydro or solar, in the sense that you have much higher fixed costs (i.e. hardware and infrastructure), but much lower variable costs (i.e. fuel, operators, consumable supplies, etc.) than you do with fossil plants.

Depending on the plant lifetime and the accounting games/techniques you use to amortize capital and refueling costs, the incremental cost of the electricity produced during the nuke plant's life could be extremely low.

[SlowwHand]

The production, yes I understand.
I was thinking that one way or another, consumers would foot the bill for both construction and tear down/revitalization.

Taking that into consideration, what would be the net savings, other than a break from oil.
I probably misread you.

[MichaeltheGreat]

That's where the accounting games come in. If you look back at the initial plant and fuel costs going forward, and fold these decommissioning costs in over the plant lifetime, then, in theory, it's still a pretty good deal.

Unfortunately, consumers already incurred the real time costs (capital and operating), so now they're about to suck up costs related to their past consumption, not present or future consumption.

It's a bad case of the "later" part of "buy now and pay later" - the costs look and feel bad, since there is no real present benefit associated, but there was, in theory, an economic benefit realized back during these plants' lifetimes, from the cheap electricity and deferral of final associated costs.