Who will pay for UK’s new nuclear waste?

DECC must tell us the truth about nuclear waste Energy and Environmental Management, David Thorpe, 1st November 2011 “…..Who will pay for new nuclear waste? In a phone conversation with another press officer, who I believe to be named Jonathan Farr, he admitted that new nuclear operators like Horizon and EDF are being asked to contribute to a fund not only to pay for management and disposal of the new nuclear waste which their plants will create, but also for that of existing nuclear waste.

I double checked that this was what he meant.

I said, “Are you seriously saying that the government is not putting aside cash to deal with our nuclear legacy but is asking nuclear operators to do so? What do they think of that?”

If I were a nuclear operator I would be outraged.

But the question was dodged. He was having a hard time explaining it in the first place, and merely reiterated the line that the government is taking a responsible position.

DECC’s line on new nuclear waste is: “New nuclear operators will be required by law to put money aside from day one to pay for the eventual decommissioning costs and their full share of waste disposal.”

The law is the Energy Act 2011, under provision for the nuclear operator’s Funded Decommissioning Programme (FDP).

The value of the FDP is calculated using a “Waste Transfer Price” of, currently, £1bn per reactor, although this is being debated by the Nuclear Liabilities Financing Board.

But Greenpeace’s economist Ian Jackson has calculated that due to the extra work needed to comply with post-Fukushima safety requirements, the estimate is out by £445 million.

If there are 10 reactors built, taxpayers will end up forking out £4.45bn to make up the shortfall.

Furthermore, the maximum price cap on all other costs has also been underestimated, he says, and should be £11.2bn higher.

The Nuclear Liabilities Financing Board is the quango looking at the FDP issue, setting this cap.

But who exactly is doing its work?

According to the minutes of the Board’s meetings, which are held every two or three months, representatives of the consortia hoping to build new nuclear power stations, Horizon, and NNB Genco (the consortium of EDF Energy and Centrica), have regularly attended its meetings.

Not only that, they seem to be setting the agenda and terms.

The minutes for December 2010, January and April 2011 illustrate how the Board and the office for Nuclear Development are letting NNB Genco design and explain the Fund, its structure and its role.

Isn’t this a case of the tail wagging the dog?

Why are the private companies which stand to benefit from obtaining the lowest cost imposition able not only to attend the meetings of those who are setting the terms for private sector liability, but actually design these terms?

Moreover, there is no mention in any of the minutes of any real detail, for the sake of transparency.

Crucially, there is also no mention of whether the operators are supposed to be liable for any decommissioning costs of existing waste, as the DECC press officer said.

The whole business is, at best completely unclear, and at worst downright irresponsible.

There are serious concerns here over the extent to which taxpayers in the future are going to have to pick up the tab for dealing with not just current but future nuclear waste.

DECC should come clean.

It must tell us now why it is dragging its feet over deep geological disposal and how much this will cost.

And no new nuclear plants should be built until we have an absolutely cast iron guarantee that it will be safe, and that taxpayers will never have to pay any more than they already do to manage this monstrous and effectively always deadly liability. http://www.eaem.co.uk/opinions/decc-must-tell-us-truth-about-nuclear-waste