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Long and difficult dismantling of EDF’s graphite technology nuclear reactors to continue

  The dismantling of EDF’s graphite technology nuclear reactors, which are
particularly long and difficult to deconstruct, can continue, the Nuclear
Safety Authority (ASN) said on Monday in a press release.

 Le Figaro 27th dec 2021

https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/l-asn-approuve-la-poursuite-du-demantelement-des-reacteurs-graphite-20211227

January 1, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, France | Leave a comment

Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants Aljazeera, 31 Dec 21,

Decision to close three facilities comes a year before decades-long use of atomic power winds down for good………

One of the plants – Brokdorf, located about 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Hamburg on the Elbe River – became a particular focus of anti-nuclear protests that were driven by the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in the Soviet Union.

The other two plants are Grohnde, about 40km (25 miles) south of Hannover, and Grundremmingen, 80km (50 miles) west of Munich.

……………… the German government said this week that decommissioning all nuclear plants next year and then phasing out the use of coal by 2030 will not affect the country’s energy security or its goal of making Europe’s biggest economy “climate neutral” by 2045.

“By massively increasing renewable energy and accelerating the expansion of the electricity grid we can show that this is possible in Germany,” Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck said.

Several of Germany’s neighbours have already ended nuclear power or announced plans to do so, but others are sticking with the technology. This has prompted concerns of a nuclear rift in Europe, with France planning to build new reactors and Germany opting for natural gas as a compromise until enough renewable power is available, and both sides arguing their preferred source of energy be classed as sustainable.

Germany’s remaining three nuclear plants — Emsland, Isar and Neckarwestheim — will be closed by the end of 2022.

While some jobs will be lost, utility company RWE said more than two-thirds of the 600 workers at its Gundremmingen nuclear power station will continue to be involved in post-shutdown operations through to the 2030s. Germany’s nuclear power companies will receive almost $3bn for the early shutdown of their plants.

Environment Minister Steffi Lemke has dismissed suggestions that a new generation of nuclear power plants might prompt Germany to change course yet again.

“Nuclear power plants remain high-risk facilities that produce highly radioactive atomic waste,” she told the Funke media group this week.

A final decision has yet to be taken about where to store tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste produced in German power plants. Experts say some material will remain dangerously radioactive for 35,000 generations. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/31/germany-shuts-down-half-of-its-remaining-nuclear-plants

January 1, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Dismantling of German nuclear reactor will be expensive, but provide jobs for several decades.

Asked about possible job losses, Gundremmingen mayor Tobias Buehler said
the plant’s employees would be busy with dismantling the reactor after the
shutdown. “And this period of dismantling will certainly take another one
or two decades,” Buehler said. Total costs for the dismantling are
estimated by E.ON at 1.1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) per plant. In 2020,
E.ON made provisions of 9.4 billion euros for the nuclear post-operational
phase, including dismantling the facility, packaging and cleaning up the
radioactive waste. The dismantling is expected to be completed by 2040.

 NBC 30th Dec 2021

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-pull-plug-3-its-last-6-nuclear-power-plants-n1286771

January 1, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, employment, Germany | Leave a comment

Germany will pull the plug on 3 of its last 6 nuclear power stations

Germany will pull the plug on three of its last six nuclear power stations
on Friday, another step towards completing its withdrawal from nuclear
power as it turns its focus to renewables.

The government decided to speed
up its phasing out of nuclear power following Japan’s Fukushima reactor
meltdown in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the coastal plant
in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years earlier.

The reactors of Brokdorf, Grohnde and Gundremmingen C, run by utilities E.ON
(EONGn.DE) and RWE (RWEG.DE), will be shut down on Friday after three and
half decades in operation. The last three nuclear power plants – Isar 2,
Emsland and Neckarwestheim II – will be turned off by the end of 2022.

 Reuters 30th Dec 2021

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-pull-plug-three-its-last-six-nuclear-plants-2021-12-30/

January 1, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Germany’s Brokdorf nuclear station closes, so activists end their 35 year vigil against it.

Germany’s long anti-nuclear protest ends, DW, 29 Dec 21,

Activists have been protesting in front of the nuclear power plant in Brokdorf, northern Germany for 35 years. But now that the plant is set to be removed from the grid, their vigil is finally over………

Singing peace songs and chatting while standing in a circle, the groups appear well-adjusted to the freezing cold, having met at the power plant’s gate on the sixth day of each month for the last 35 years.

Today, the activists are once again holding a vigil to commemorate the victims of nuclear catastrophes while also demanding the shutdown of the nuclear reactor in their neighborhood.

Today is different, however. This 425th vigil will be the last. Later this month, the Brokdorf nuclear power plant will be shut down as part of Germany’s 2022 nuclear phaseout.

First nuclear reactor after Chernobyl

Amid the growing anti-nuclear movement in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands protested against the construction of the nuclear plant in Brokdorf.

Time and again, the protesters clashed with the police — especially after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986 saw increased radiation levels in soil and foods across Germany…..

Opening in late 1986, Brokdorf was the first nuclear reactor in the world to go into operation after the Chernobyl disaster.

At that time, Werner and a few allies protested peacefully and decided to continue their protests in the future. They vowed to meet once a month until Brokdorf was shut down…….

Increased cancer risk, and an ice rink

His fears weren’t unjustified. In 2008, a study found that children growing up in close proximity to a German nuclear power plant face a higher risk of developing leukemia.

Yet plants stayed open amid such health threats. One reason might be the decades of high revenues earned by the Brokdorf municipality through a commercial tax on the plant. Local politicians were loath to give up this income…….

Meanwhile, the nuclear power lobby is promoting nuclear energy as an allegedly clean and, most importantly, climate-friendly alternative………..   compared to power from wind and solar energy, the technology costs are much higher, and the construction of nuclear plants takes significantly longer.

Military motives

The fact that states still stick with nuclear power clearly also has another reason, said Andrew Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex.

“Globally speaking, those countries that are the most truly dedicated to a civil use of nuclear energy either also have nuclear weapons or they are very keen on getting them,” he said.

According to Stirling, the civil use of nuclear energy is often needed for the realization of nuclear weapons programs, a point admitted by nuclear armed France and the US.

Without the engineers and specialists working in the commercial nuclear power sector, it would be impossible to build nuclear-powered submarines, for example, Stirling explained.

“The reports from the USA are absolutely clear. Even if the costs of nuclear energy were twice as high, it would still make sense for them to build reactors because this allows them to keep up their military activities,” he said……….

although Brokdorf will be removed from the grid on December 31, the plant will continue to serve as a temporary storage facility for nuclear waste for decades. There is still no final repository for radioactive waste.

“Therefore, our commitment is not yet over,” said one of the activists.   https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-long-anti-nuclear-protest-ends/a-60278006

December 30, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

France’s oldest nuclear power plant, shut in 1985, still highly radioactive

 “You can’t see radioactivity, you can’t feel it, so people don’t care”: in Brennilis, nuclear power is no longer operating. Shutdown in 1985, the monts d’Arrée power plant was the first in France to begin dismantling.
The reactor block of the Finistère nuclear power plant in Brennilis remains one of the last vestiges of the gigantic installation, in operation from 1967 to 1985. Despite the decades, its dismantling has not yet been completed. It is in this building, however, that the most radioactive elements of the infrastructure are stored, a prototype of a heavy water reactor cooled with carbon dioxide, never reproduced in France afterwards.

 Le Monde 28th Dec 2021

https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2021/12/28/la-radioactivite-ca-ne-se-voit-pas-ca-ne-se-sent-pas-donc-les-gens-s-en-fichent-a-brennilis-le-nucleaire-ne-mobilise-plus_6107467_4500055.html

December 30, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, France | Leave a comment

Belgium to shut down all 7 nuclear reactors in 2025

 Nuclear: the Belgian government confirms the shutdown in 2025 of the
country’s seven reactors. As planned, Belgium will shut down its two power
plants, but is not closing the door to new generation nuclear power. An
agreement was torn off on Thursday after a night of negotiations between
the partners of the government coalition.

 Liberation 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/nucleaire/nucleaire-le-gouvernement-belge-confirme-larret-en-2025-des-sept-reacteurs-du-pays-20211223_5HUXXHO645DKBPEHJZUGINMR3M/
 Les Echos 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/energie-environnement/la-belgique-confirme-sa-sortie-du-nucleaire-des-2025-1374495

December 27, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Belgian government to close its nuclear plants by 2025

The Belgian government agreed in principle on Thursday to close its
nuclear power plants by 2025, but left open the possibility of extending
the life of two reactors if it could not otherwise ensure energy supply.
The seven-party coalition has wrestled for months with the topic, with the
Greens adamant that a 2003 law setting out a nuclear exit be respected,
while the French-speaking liberals favoured extending the life of the two
newest reactors. The government had given itself an end-2021 deadline to
settle the matter.

 Reuters 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/belgian-government-reaches-deal-nuclear-exit-media-2021-12-23/
 The Belgian government agreed in principle on Thursday to close its
nuclear power plants by 2025, but left open the possibility of extending
the life of two reactors if it could not otherwise ensure energy supply.

 Globe and Mail 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/article-belgian-government-reaches-agreement-in-principle-to-close-its-nuclear/

 Euro News 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/23/belgium-to-shut-down-all-seven-of-its-nuclear-reactors-by-2025

 BBC 23rd Dec 2021

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59768195

December 27, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Holtec gets approval to acquire and dismantle Palisades nuclear plant: not everyone is happy.


Holtec receives NRC approval to acquire Michigan nuclear plant

Jim Walsh, Cherry Hill Courier-Post 20 Dec 21,  CAMDEN – Holtec International has received an initial approval to acquire a nuclear power plant that it plans to decommission and dismantle.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the Camden firm “met the regulatory, legal, technical and financial requirements” to obtain the license for the Palisades plant in Covert, Michigan.

The NRC similarly supported a license transfer for a second Michigan site, the Big Rock Point facility. The Hayes Township plant has already been decommissioned, with only a fuel storage facility remaining, according to the NRC…………

opponents of the license transfer will “seriously consider” a court appeal of the NRC’s “shocking” decision, said Terry Lodge, an attorney for a coalition of environmental groups.

“We have been denied our due process rights,” claimed Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan, who said the NRC had denied a hearing “on our very serious environmental, health, safety, and fiscal concerns.”

Among other points, the critics question whether the power plants’ decommissioning trust funds will cover needed expenses. They also assert Holtec is tapping the trust funds for unrelated costs. https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/2021/12/20/holtec-nrc-nuclear-power-plant-palisades-big-rock-point-michigan/8963723002/

December 21, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

Heysham 2 nuclear power station to close earlier than planned

Heysham 2 nuclear power station will continue generating electricity
safely until 2028, however, “closing” two years earlier than originally
planned. In 2016, the sites’ operational lives were extended by seven
years to 2030. Operational dates are under constant review and since then
inspection, modelling and operational experience from other sites, have
given EDF a clearer picture of lifetime expectations for the AGR fleet as
the stations age. Heysham 1 will operate until 2024,

 Lancaster Guardian 17th Dec 2021

https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/business/heysham-2-nuclear-power-station-will-continue-generating-electricity-until-2028-3496867ac1

December 20, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Hinkley B nuclear power station to shut down permanently next summer.

Hinkley Point B to start final run of producing electricity before
shutting down next summer. Hinkley Point B is about to start its final run
of producing electricity before it shuts down for good next summer. The
nuclear power station on the West Somerset coastline has been operating for
over 45 years and it’s expected that many members of staff will stay on to
help with de-fuelling and decommissioning.

 ITV 11th Dec 2021

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2021-12-11/hinkley-point-b-power-station-to-start-final-run-before-shutting-down

December 13, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | 2 Comments

Hunterston and Continuous Decommissioning 

 nuClear News No136 Dec 21,  Hunterston and Continuous Decommissioning    The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s 2021-24 Business Plan (1) says it has reviewed the Magnox reactor decommissioning strategy and endorsed a site-specific approach to Magnox reactor decommissioning which will involve a mix of decommissioning strategies. For some sites this will result in their decommissioning being brought forward whilst for others a deferral strategy will be the chosen approach. New Site-Specific Strategies will be developed for each Magnox station across Britain. These will support optimal sequencing of reactor dismantling – a rolling programme of decommissioning which will maximise the opportunity for sharing any lessons learned, developing and implementing new technologies and strengthening wider capability. 
These new site-specific decommissioning strategies are currently being defined. A timetable will be set that best suits each site and a business case developed to set out the benefits and cost and schedule impacts of any changes.  

  Reactor dismantling at the Hunterston A Magnox station, which ceased generation in 1990, is now expected to start in 2035. The previous strategy was to place the reactors into care and maintenance for up to 85 years to allow for radioactivity to decay. The current work programme which involves packaging various waste, sludges etc and placing the packages into an Intermediate Level Waste store will now take until 2030, 40 years after it ceased operation. The plant opened in 1964, so by 2030 Hunterston A will have spent longer being cleaned up than it actually spent generating electricity. Originally the current work programme was expected to be completed by 2022, but problems associated with retrieving waste in 5 bunkers has caused delays. The period between 2030 and 2035 will be spent demolishing various buildings.

 Under the old strategy the NDA was going to install a “weather envelope” around the old Magnox reactors. Work on this has now been suspended. 

  Hunterston B Meanwhile, Hunterston B – Reactor 3 switched off for final time on 26th November. The reactor was first switched on on 6th February 1976. When EDF acquired the power station it was expected to end generation in 2016. (2) Hunterston B Reactor 4 – is scheduled to shut down in January, which will see the end of power generation for the site in North Ayrshire, Scotland. (3)

 Reactor 3 and Reactor 4 were taken offline on 9 March and 3 October 2018, respectively, after cracks in their graphite cores were discovered during routine inspections. In August 2020, the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) gave approval to EDF to restart Reactor 4 in August 2020 and Reactor 3 the following month. The reactors were taken offline earlier this year for further inspections of their graphite cores. In April, the ONR gave permission for the units to be    switched back on. However, it said continued operation would be for up to a total of 16.7 terawatt days for Reactor 3 and 16.52 terawatt days for Reactor 4 – about six months of operation for each reactor. Reactor 3 returned to service on 23 April and Reactor 4 on 5 June.


 In June, the UK government and EDF agreed on improved arrangements to decommission the UK’s seven AGR nuclear plants that are scheduled to close this decade. This followed an announcement by EDF that it had decided not to restart the first of the AGRs, Dungeness B, and to begin defuelling with immediate effect. (4) Each of the AGR sites will move across to the NDA on a rolling basis once defueling and fuel free verification are complete, for the decommissioning work to be overseen and managed by the NDA’s Magnox division. However, EDF’s defueling work will be supported by the NDA divisions Sellafield Ltd and Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS) alongside other parts of the NDA group. Spent fuel from Hunterston B will be sent by train to Sellafield. (5)

 EDF has now submitted a defueling safety case to ONR. First there will be what’s called “defueling outage” which will last about 60 days – making sure everything is safe to commence defueling. Defueling is then expected to start in March 2022 and will take around 3 years.
 After defueling the NDA will take control of the AGR reactors. Under the old regime it would have taken until about 2030 to prepare the reactors for a period of care and maintenance. Now Hunterston B will develop a site-specific decommissioning strategy which should involve reactor dismantling sooner rather than later, thus providing the prospect of more continuous employment on the site.


 The NDA, EDF and Magnox have been working together to investigate the feasibility of Hunterston B sharing the use of the Hunterston A Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) store and processing facility. Seems obvious that they should, but EDF has recently been working on plans for a standalone store. EDF and NDA have now agreed to share the Hunterston A store and EDF has suspended work on a Hunterston B store. ONR & SEPA still need to be consulted and a planning application made to North Ayrshire Council (NAC). (6)  https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/nuClearNewsNo136.pdf

 

December 11, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Hunterston nuclear reactor 3 closed, but there will be decades from defuelling through dismantling

SafeEnergy E Journal  No.92. December 2  Hunterston Reactor 3 is expected to come off line at the end of November and Reactor 4 before 7th January 2022. There would then be 2 months of statutory outage and then defueling would commence. EDF is hoping to despatch 4 rather than 2 spent fuel flasks every week to Sellafield during defueling.

Defueling will take around three years and will continue to draw on the skills of EDF’s specialist staff and contractors. It will then take around 5 or 6 years to prepare the plant for a period of 40 to 50 years of care and maintenance. Final dismantling could begin around 2070.   https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/SafeEnergy_No92.pdf

November 27, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Humboldt Bay Power Plant decommissioning; problem of nuclear waste buried not far from sea level, in a seismic area

PG&E completes decommissioning process, ends nuclear facility license

But more work remains: 37 tons of nuclear waste are in an eroding bluff near King Salmon,  
By ISABELLA VANDERHEIDEN | ivanderheiden@times-standard.com | Times-Standard October 30, 2021    Following a years-long effort to decommission the former nuclear power plant in Humboldt Bay, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. recently filed a request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate the power plant’s license marking a “major milestone” for the Humboldt County community……..

Decomissioning

Decommissioning efforts for the Humboldt Bay Power Plant Unit 3, a 63-Megawatt electric boiling water reactor, began in June 2009, more than 30 years after the power plant had ceased operations. It operated from 1963 to 1976 and was permanently defueled in 1984.

At the time of the power plant’s construction, atomic energy was hailed as the solution to global energy needs……….

Why was the power plant short-lived? As it turns out, seismically active regions are not ideal locations for nuclear power……………

More to be done

Buried deep into Buhne Point, a highland bluff directly northeast of King Salmon, is an underground nuclear waste storage facility known as the Humboldt Bay Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, or ISFSI. While the ISFSI will effectively contain the 37-tons of nuclear waste for approximately 50 years, it is not a permanent solution.

“All of the high-level waste that was ever produced at the power plant including all the spent fuel rods the reactor cut up into pieces, all that stuff is buried on top of the hill at King Salmon,” Kalt said. “The ISFSI is really what the Baykeeper is concerned about at this point.”

Corral said the “five casks of spent nuclear fuel and one cask of Greater than Class C waste” will remain on site until an offsite repository is available, “as promised by the federal government.”

However, Kalt said the waste will never be removed “because nobody wants it.”

I really just don’t think it’s appropriate anyway. It would be so dangerous to move it and it would be unfair to put that on another community,” she said.”There is no such thing as ‘away’. If you’re going to have something that toxic in your community, you should understand that this is in perpetuity.”

The ISFSI will have to be relocated at some point as the bluff continues to erode and the sea level continues to rise.

“The projections indicate that the sea level will be four feet higher in 50 years than it is today,” Kalt said. “The ISFSI is on the top of an eroding bluff, it’s 44-feet above sea level, it’s buried to 30 feet below the surface, so the bottom is only 10 feet above sea level currently. …What are we going to do, you know? It’s pretty clear that there needs to be a plan to at least move it back from the bay, it’s going to be really expensive and controversial, but leaving it there is not a plan. It’s a nightmare.”

It won’t be easy, but Kalt said there needs to be a community process in deciding where to relocate the ISFSI……………….https://www.times-standard.com/2021/10/30/2687577/

November 1, 2021 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

Ontario’s Unfunded Nuclear Decommissioning Liability is in the $18-$27 Billion CAD Range

 Ontario’s Unfunded Nuclear Decommissioning Liability is in the $18-$27 Billion CAD Range

https://tinyurl.com/5a9du4mz    Editorial Team, August 6 2021 Late last year I worked up the likely amount of public money that would have to be thrown at the nuclear industry in order to successfully and safely decommission the 100 operational reactors and the now shut down ones. Unsurprisingly, the nuclear industry had been very optimistic in its estimates of decommissioning costs and timeframes, when the global empirical averages were trending to a billion USD and 100 years per reactor.

Recently I was asked by an Ontario journalist what I thought the likely situation in Ontario would be, and whether the decommissioning trusts were equally underfunded. I was unsurprised to find that Canada is in the same boat as the US, with highly optimistic schedule and cost projections which belie Canadian empirical experience with the CANDU reactor, and that the fund had nowhere near the money necessary for the job. Let’s run the numbers. [diagram on original]

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is the chunk of the provincial utility that was carved apart in the late 1990s by the Mike Harris Conservatives to handle generation alone. It operates 18 aging CANDU reactors across three sites: Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington.

Table of operational nuclear generation reactors in Ontario

OPG has a nuclear decommissioning fund of about $5 billion CAD or US$4 billion right now. If the experience of other countries on the actual cost of a billion USD per reactor and an actual timeline of decommissioning of a century holds true, and I see no reason why it doesn’t, that means that there is currently a $17.5 billion CAD gap in Ontario, in addition to the existing $19.3 billion CAD in debt still being serviced from their construction. When the government of the era split up the utility, it moved all of the debt off of the components and into general debt. One of the many appropriate and sensible things that the McGuinty Administration did in the 2000s, in addition to shutting down coal generation entirely, was to move the debt back into the utility and set about servicing it from utility bills.

Most of the reactors at Bruce Nuclear are aging out, with several over 40 years old and the remainder approaching 40. Darlington’s are around 30, so they have a bit of runway. Pickering’s reactors are going to be shut down in 2024 and 2025 and start decommissioning in 2028. While refurbishment could bridge Ontario’s for another 20 years in many cases, that’s expensive and typically won’t pass any economic viability assessment compared to alternatives.

The likelihood is that all reactors in Ontario will reach end of life by 2035, and be replaced by some combination of renewable energy and HVDC transmission from neighboring jurisdictions, with both Manitoba and Quebec having excellent, low-carbon hydroelectric to spare.

Does the empirical experience of shutting down CANDU reactors track to the roughly billion USD that’s seen for other reactors? According to the World Nuclear Association, no.

The fourth unit is Gentilly 2, a more modern Candu 6 type, which was shut down at the end of 2012 after 30 years operation. It is being defuelled and the heavy water was to be treated over 18 months to mid-2014. A decommissioning licence was issued for 2016 to 2026 and the main part of the reactor will be closed up and left for 40 years to allow radioactivity to decay before demolition. All 27,000 fuel bundles are expected to be in dry storage (Macstor) by 2020. The decommissioning cost is put at C$ 1.8 billion over 50 years.”

That translates to US$1.44 billion, so it would appear as if CANDUs are on the expensive side to decommission. If that holds true, Ontario’s gap is actually in the range of $27 billion CAD.

Nuclear decommissioning funding comes from reactors operating revenue. In the US, it’s 0.01 to 0.02 cents per kWh as a set aside. I wasn’t able to find the required set aside for Ontario’s fleet, but obviously they aren’t setting aside sufficient funds now, or have absurdly optimistic fund growth expectations. They only have a decade to set aside more money from operating reactors, and have only set aside $5 billion CAD after 50 years, so the most generous assumption is that they will set aside perhaps $7 billion CAD in the OPG fund by end of life of the reactors, and have a liability for decommissioning of $15.5 to $27 billion CAD. For the next step, let’s assume $20 billion CAD for the sake of round numbers.

Given the likelihood of all of Ontario’s reactors being off of the grid by 2035, with major decommissioning occurring every few years until then, the kWh generated by Ontario’s nuclear fleet from now through 2060 will be in the range of about 1000 TWh assuming there are no lengthy outages at any of the plants, which to be clear is an awful lot of low carbon electricity.

However, $20 billion is a big number too. It turns into about 19 cents per kWh if you only count electricity generated from today through end of life for the reactors. It’s obviously a lot lower if you calculated from beginning of the lifetime of the reactors. However you count it though, that’s only the unfunded Ontario liability, and it’s on top of subsidized security costs Canada and Ontario and municipalities bear, and it’s on top of the outstanding $19.3 billion in debt that has only been receiving servicing on the interest since the McGuinty government brought it back into the utility. It’s likely that the majority of that debt will be outstanding in 2035 still, as it has gone from $20 billion to $19.3 billion in the last 11 years, so expecting it to be gone by 2035 is not realistic.

So yes, Ontario’s nuclear program will be a fiscal burden on Ontarians to the tune of around $40 billion CAD which will be spent through roughly 2135, finally being paid off by the great-grandchildren of babies born in 2021.

Nuclear, the gift that keeps on giving.

This article was originally published by Cleantechnica.com.

Read the original article here.

October 2, 2021 Posted by | Canada, decommission reactor | Leave a comment