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Decommissioning old nuclear sites to cost £130bn in blow to Miliband

Expense to taxpayer of cleaning up former power plants is higher than previously estimated, say auditors

Jonathan Leake, Telegraph, 29 Nov 24

Ed Miliband faces a bill of almost £130bn to clean up Britain’s old nuclear sites after estimated costs jumped.

It will cost £128.8bn to safely wind down old facilities, according to an investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) – £23.5bn more than previously expected, after factoring in the cost of shutting eight power stations that are currently operational.

Seven nuclear stations are due to shut down in 2028 at which point operator EDF, France’s state-owned energy firm, will hand them back to the British Government for decommissioning.

Another station, Sizewell B, is expected to keep operating into the 2030s when it too will be decommissioned at taxpayer expense.

The NAO report, which looked at the overall operation of Mr Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz), said: “The current best estimate is that the eight existing sites will each cost £23.5bn to defuel and decommission.”

This is in addition to £105.3bn already set aside for dealing with other legacy projects, chiefly waste stockpiled at Sellafield in Cumbria.

Desnz oversees a Nuclear Liabilities Fund set up to save the money needed for decommissioning the eight stations, but the NAO said this had proven woefully inadequate.

It also warned that the final costs and taxpayer contributions could rise even higher.

The NAO said: “Costs could rise further, particularly if defuelling takes longer than planned … There is a risk that further taxpayer contributions may be required.”

However, the cost of decommissioning the UK’s remaining working nuclear stations is dwarfed by the amount which the NAO found was needed for dealing with legacy waste since the 1950s.

About 70pc of the costs relate to the Sellafield site in Cumbria, where thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive waste are stored in buildings and cooling ponds that are up to 70 years old – many considered extremely hazardous.

The figures mean the cost of the UK’s nuclear clean-up alone is close to the total value of electricity produced by atomic power stations since the 1950s.

Figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that since Britain’s first nuclear power station opened in 1956, they have generated 2.6bn megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity with a wholesale value of about £200bn at today’s prices.

If the cost of building Britain’s 20-odd past and present nuclear power stations were included – around £30bn each in today’s money – the total cost of several hundred billion pounds would far exceed the value of the power produced, say experts.

The NAO report also looked at the system of Contracts for Difference (CfD) – a financing method created by the UK to guarantee investors in wind farms, solar farms and nuclear power stations sufficient income.

Such schemes, it warned, were already set to cost consumers £89bn by the 2030s – but the final sums could be far higher because of unreliable estimates for the amount of power likely to be produced……………………… https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/29/decommissioning-old-nuclear-sites-to-cost-130bn-in-blow/

December 4, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, Reference, UK