nuclear-news

Cost of shutting down UK’s old nuclear reactors is doubling and then some

 The cost of decommissioning the UK’s seven ageing nuclear power stations
has nearly doubled to £23.5bn and is likely to rise further, the public
accounts committee has said. The soaring costs of safely decommissioning
the advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs), including Dungeness B, Hunsterston
B and Hinkley B, are being loaded on to the taxpayer, their report said.
Failures in the government’s investment strategy for the fund, which was
set up to pay for the decommissioning, have led to the taxpayer topping it
up by an additional £10.7bn in just two years. The nuclear power stations
are owned by EDF Energy and provide much of the UK’s nuclear
power-generated electricity, which makes up 16% of the energy mix. But the
stations are nearing the end of their lives and are scheduled to stop
generating electricity during this decade. The government has recently
agreed that once the stations have been defuelled by EDF, which involves
the removal of all the spent fuel from the reactor core and cooling ponds,
ownership of the stations will be transferred to the government’s Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to complete decommissioning.

 Guardian 20th May 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/20/uk-nuclear-power-stations-decommissioning-cost

May 21, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, UK