{"id":56032,"date":"2020-12-16T09:25:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56032"},"modified":"2020-12-16T09:25:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:25:25","slug":"us-nuclear-site-cleanup-underfunded-by-up-to-70-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56032","title":{"rendered":"US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Headlines out of the UK<\/a>\u00a0are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK\u2019s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn\u2019t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected for cleanup. They are currently projecting $177 billion and 120 years for the full decommissioning, over $1 billion per site. Some of this is due to botched procurement, with two different cleanup vendors stripped of their contracts.<\/p>\n

\"Hinkley<\/a><\/p>\n

Hinkley Site C Nuclear Generation Facility, image courtesy Government of the UK<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Certainly the UK cleanup is a fustercluck of epic proportions, equivalent in fiscal sense to building Hinkley. That new reactor, billions and years over budget and schedule, required a\u00a0commitment for 35 years to pay $150\/MWh for every MWh<\/a>\u00a0they generated, at a time when onshore wind and solar in the UK are at or under $50\/MWh and offshore wind is under $100\/MWh.<\/p>\n

Some US commenters were feeling chuffed, although that\u2019s not a term they would use, that the US was handling things so much better. But the USA isn\u2019t far behind the UK in problems, it just isn\u2019t as public.<\/p>\n

Per the\u00a0World Nuclear Association:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents\/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the\u00a0basis of an average of $320 million per unit<\/b>). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion Headlines out of the UK\u00a0are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK\u2019s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn\u2019t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[30726,30725,579],"class_list":["post-56032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-clean-technica","tag-michael-barnard","tag-nuclear-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56033,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56032\/revisions\/56033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}