nuclear-news

Fukushima cleanup costs – $250-$500 billion!

The staggering costs to clean up Fukushima Smart Planet By Tyler Falk | November 12, 2013 More than two years since the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the Fukushima power plant meltdown is still a major, global environmental problem. And the staggering price tag for cleaning it up continues to rise.

The Japanese government just announced that it’s borrowing about $30 billion more to cover costs related to Fukushima, bringing the total amount the Japanese government has borrowed to clean up the mess to around $80 billion, more than three times the amount BP spent to clean up the  massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That money will go into cleanup, along with compensation for the people who may never go back to their homes near the contaminated area, and the decommissioning of the nuclear reactors. But it’s not money that the government is on the hook for, Reuters reports:……

it should hardly come as a surprise that the cleanup is proving so costly. Independent estimates put the total economic cost of the disaster at $250-$500 billion. Tepco has said it will need $137 billion to cover costs related to Fukushima. And if Chernobyl is any indication, the costs will likely continue for decades to come. And the real issue might not even be the cleanup costs or health concerns, but the fact that a large, productive area of land (of which Japan doesn’t have much to begin with) is now essentially useless and will be for many years, decades, or possibly centuries to come……. http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-staggering-costs-to-clean-up-fukushima/33974

November 13, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Fukushima 2013, Japan