nuclear-news

The terminal decline of the nuclear industry is becoming apparent

Our Nuclear Menace – Just as Darwin Would Have Predicted  Andrew McKillop MAY 6, 2014 BY 21WIRE The Dark Enlightenment
The nuclear enlightenment has shredded the claims that nuclear power is “clean cheap and safe”. The most nuclear-intensive country in the world for power production, France, from 2013, has set a yearly rise of power prices of 10% for at least the next 3 years, probably continued after 2017, in an attempt to start paying the economic damage from its nuclear binge.  France’s official CPI is about 1.5% annual, meaning that power prices will rise at 7 times the official inflation rate.

As many as 25 of its 60-strong reactor fleet, simply due to age, will have to start being decommissioned through 2025-2040. The cost estimates for this are unsure, but the French General Accounting Office (Cour des Comptes) in Jan 2012 estimated about 3.8 billion euros for each NPP – and the French government is now trying to amass a decommissioning and dismantling fund. Inevitably this will mean further decline of power-intensive industries and fuel poverty.

The Fukushima disaster of 2011 in Japan has had a wide number of estimates for its total costs through the next 15 – 20 years, running to a consensus average around $150 – $175 billion, and that cost will surely increase as every year of inaction passes by.

Total accumulated costs from the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, to date, for the governments of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are placed in the region of at least $350 billion by sources including the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE).

May 12, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs