A major milestone is about
to be met on the decommissioning (decom) of the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power
Plant, where the final pieces of the reactor vessel are now being cut up, and
will be packaged and shipped off by this November. After some 2000+ shipments of mid-level radioactive materials to
Texas and Idaho, all that will remain is “lower-level” contaminated concrete,
piping, and soil, which will be gone by 2019.
The decom project is on schedule and on track with its estimated $1+
billion price tag. After 2019, the site
will be contamination free, and all that will remain will be 6 dry casks
containing the high-level spent fuel stored in a secure bunker.
The experience and implications from Humboldt Bay translate
directly to what is being planned at several locations in the US, where shut
down nuclear reactors await dismantlement.
The just released decommissioning plan for the twin reactors at San
Onofre in southern California, a power plant 30x larger than Humboldt Bay, is
currently estimated to cost $4.4 billion, and take 20 years to complete. I believe this is overly optimistic, coming
from an industry that has historically underestimated everything they’ve planned
and said. Humboldt Bay decom costs went
from $95 million when the plant shut down, to $380 million in 2004 when actual
work began, to the current $1+ billion estimate. Whatever the final figure, this cost explodes the myth that
nuclear power is cheap, clean, and economically feasible.
With 105 reactors in the US needing eventual decommissioned
in the next 20-60 years, no one knows what that actual total cost will be…$200
billion…$300 billion…half a trillion dollars????? Costs in nuclear technology have always gone up.
Two major points need to be put in perspective. In the few reactors that have actually been
decommissioned, decom cost have more often exceeded actual initial construction
costs. These “back-end” expenses are
not identified or quantified in the real, true cost of the nuclear electricity
which is produced. At Humboldt Bay, the
decom price alone is about 20 cents/kwh for the 5 billion kwhs that were
produced in the 13 years the plant operated.
That cost was not reflected directly on the ratepayers electricity bill
40 years ago, but has since been levied, and even today, and for the next 5
years, is being paid for by PG&E consumers who never used any of that
nuclear electricity. If decom costs
were truly incorporated in the price tag of the two Vogle reactors currently
being built in Georgia, the $14 billion subsidized capital investment would
swell to $28 billion…$40 billion…$??????
Amortizing that cost over the 40-year life of the reactors would make
that nuclear electricity very, very expensive.
Nobody is talking about that.
What the industry is doing is what it has always done in the
past…claiming we need this cheap, clean source of electricity, and defraying
well into the future the huge backend decom and waste storage costs, and
basically letting our children and future generations deal with it.
The second issue deals with the 80,000+ tons of high-level
wastes in the form of spent fuel stored all around the US. The current strategy for storing this highly
radioactive material involves moving the fuel rods from basic cooling swimming
pools to air-cooled dry casks. At
Humboldt Bay, a bunker was built in 2004 at a cost of $10 million; the purchase
and loading of six dry casks was $10 million each; and the security and
maintenance costs since then have been about $10 million per year. Thus, through 2025, spent fuel storage will
approximate $270 million…just for the tiny amount at Humboldt. No specific details have been released for
San Onofre as to how many casks will be stored on site for the next 25…50…??? years,
or the costs. The Federal government actually owns this material and is
responsible for its ultimate disposal.
However, there is no place to put it, except to leave it on site! For the past 30 years, a small fee was
attached to the cost of nuclear electricity to pay for ultimate disposal. In early 2014, about $30 billion had been
collected into this Waste Fund. Out of
this, $15 billion has already been spent on the defunct Yucca Mountain project,
and a federal court just ruled that the Fund, and its remaining money, was an
absurdly ridiculous low amount to do anything, and ended the Fund and its
collection. In 2003, Yucca Mountain was estimated to cost over $100 billion for
construction and operation. Thus, costs
for what we are going to do in the future…whatever that will be...are unknown,
and most likely will be very expensive.
And, it is now the fiscal responsibility of the federal taxpayers.
Putting all the spent fuel into dry casks is an enormous
challenge. At $10 million per cask, and
estimated 6000+ casks needed for the volume of waste produced to date… we’re
looking at $60+/- billion which you and I are going to pay for. These casks are designed to last for 50-60
years. Then what? Re-cask with newer technology? Move them to a central storage place? Bury them in some underground vault? That’s just for high-level spent fuel. Add to all this the cost of cleaning up
everything else associated with the nuclear power industry…uranium mining
wastes, decommissioning and cleaning up the enrichment and fuel fabrication
plants, and dealing with low-level radiation dumps (many of the old ones are
leaky messes)…a trillion dollars????…all to be paid for by the taxpayer. And the reality is that all this with no real
positive benefit to society, other than the few jobs this cleanup industry
creates. It’s sort of like the
trillions of dollars we spent building nuclear weapon systems we prayed we
would never have to use. Maybe we can’t
afford health care for the poor and elderly, social security for our seniors,
protecting our health from a toxic environment…but we, and future generations,
will pay this bill. Chernobyl and
Fukushima have proven a mandate for it.
The definitive question is “why do we want to build more
nuclear power plants, when renewables offer us a much cleaner, safer, cheaper,
and sustainable future?” The industry
claims that the new generation of reactors and the so-called new modular
reactors (many years from actual development and testing) would be cheaper,
cleaner, and safer. Again, another pipe
dream. Nuclear reactors will always
produce radioactive wastes…basic laws of physics. A lot of this new technology would rely on reprocessing, or
“recycling” wastes; and leads us into the “breeder” plutonium type of reactors,
which are dangerous on so many fronts.
This direction has been tried for over 50 years in many countries, and
has proven to be very expensive, technologically infeasible, and actually
produces more volumes of radioactive wastes, in more difficult to manage forms,
than current reactors. New reactors may
be safer…but they can never be perfectly safe.
As for costs, again the industry claims new modular reactors will be
cheaper to construct. Since these
technologies have never been built, and won’t even be tested until 2023 or
beyond, the industry’s optimism is hard to believe. And once again, in all this optimism, there is no discussion of
the back end…decommissioning, waste disposal and storage, etc.
Meanwhile, renewables are beginning to make tremendous
headway into the production of electricity worldwide. The potential exponential
growth and decrease in costs in solar and wind is being held back by the
continued campaign of mis-statements, half truths, and narrow, shallow thinking
of the big moneyed corporate interests and their political lackeys. Eventually, it all boils down to the free
market and to clean, safe, economical, and sustainable energy. Renewables are beginning to at least become
major players in this battle.
Here are a few pertinent references for the above discussion:
Feel free to ask me questions, ask for citations for my statements, and engage me in a meaningful discussion of these and any associated issues. I welcome “old school” concept of people actually talking and learning from each other!
