I have already written a post about decommissioning nuclear reactors. In that previous post, I ending it by writing about concerns I had with the funding of the decommissioning. In this post, I want to drill down into that subject a bit more. The NRC requires nuclear power companies to maintain sufficient funds to dismantle nuclear power reactors and decontaminate the land where the reactor was located. Recently, the NRC reported that companies operating eighteen of the one hundred and four nuclear reactors in the U.S. do not have sufficient funds to satisfy the decommissioning requirements.
The cost of constructing nuclear reactors is currently in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The projected cost of decommissioning a nuclear reactor can be over one billion dollars. In the past few years a reactor sold for ten million dollars. It is interesting that the cost for decommissioning a non-functioning reactor can be five times the cost of building a new one and a hundred times the cost of buying an existing functioning reactor. I believe this is a unique situation for major electricity producing power plants.
One problem that may increase the cost of decommissioning could be the problem of disposing of spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. government will not have a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel before 2040 at the earliest. That being the case, any spent nuclear fuel at a shut down nuclear power plant would have to be stored on or off site in temporary storage which could be an additional expense that would have to be added to the general decommissioning cost.
Another problem that comes to mind is the cost of the actual decommissioning work. Decommissioning a reactor is a difficult and time consuming task requiring special equipment and special expertise. Most of the 100 reactors in the U.S. are nearing the end of their projected lifespan. Some are being relicensed for an extended period but some are just too old to keep operating safely and must be shut down soon. As more and more reactors are shut down and decommissioned, there will be less and less call for decommissioning and there may be fewer and fewer companies with that capability. This could lead to an increase in price for the services of the remaining companies.
The length of the process is also troubling. Companies in the U.S. have up to sixty years from the date of shut down to decommission a nuclear power plant. If the market for nuclear power becomes less lucrative, some companies may go bankrupt and cease to exist. If a company owning a reactor fails, then what happens to the decommissioning fund is a critical question. If it goes into the bankruptcy proceeding and is divided up between credit
If the cost estimate of the decommissioning is too low, then what will happen if the company closing the reactor cannot afford the extra cost? The U.S. government and tax payers will have to pay the extra.
The general health of the U.S. economy is also a concern. Recently a nuclear power company assured that NRC that they had sufficient funds because they had invested the funds and the stock market was doing well. What happens if the decommissioning funds are invested in the stock market and the market crashes, wiping out the invested funds? In this case, there might not be enough tax revenue for the U.S. government to cover decommissioning costs.
Recently the U.S. government instituted the Sequester which required across the board cuts in government programs. New leaks at the Hanford Nuclear reservation have been in the news recently and there is pressure on the Federal government to do something about them. It has been reported that the cuts from the Sequester may slow down the cleanup work at the Hanford facility. If there are government budget problems in the future and more cuts in government programs, any nuclear decommissioning work that the government is committed to could also be slowed down or canceled.
Problems with the nuclear decommissioning funds maintained by nuclear power companies are not usually among the top issues discussed when the viability of nuclear power being considered but, in the long run, they may prove to be very important.
Estimates of Vermont Yankee decommissioning costs and available funds from a fairwinds.org report:
