UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning
- Reference: 1643714889
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/02/01/nao_nuclear_decommissioning/
- Source link:
French firm EDF Energy runs seven Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) stations in the UK, part of eight second-generation reactors set to be decommissioned which provide 16 per cent of the nation's electricity. The AGR stations are scheduled to stop producing electricity by 2028.
Last year the government injected £5.1bn into the Nuclear Liabilities Fund – now valued a £14.8bn – which it set up in 1996 to meet the costs of decommissioning AGR and Pressurised Water Reactor stations.
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But EDF's latest cost estimate to decommission the stations in March last year was £23.5bn.
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Public spending watchdog the National Audit Office has warned more money will be needed unless the government and EDF avoid overspending.
In a report earlier, it pointed out that cost estimates had doubled in real terms since 2004-05. Unless the government and EDF reverse this trend, there is a risk that the taxpayer will have to make further contributions.
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Much will depend on the management of the defueling process.
The Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) did not sign off on the transfer of the sites from EDF to the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) until June 2021, when the new agreements were signed by the Secretary of State. Under current plans the first station could transfer as early as 2026.
"But the NDA will not know the exact details of what will transfer nor have a full understanding of the associated costs and liabilities until closer to the expected transfer," the report said. "The cost of defueling the AGR fleet is likely to be highly dependent on the rate at which the stations can be safely refuelled."
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EDF estimated in 2021-22 that the cost of defueling the AGR fleet could be between £3.1bn and £8bn depending on the scenario. As soon as EDF declares a station closed to electricity production, all the costs of the station are borne by the Nuclear Liabilities Fund.
"The costs to be borne by the Fund are therefore very dependent on how soon defueling begins once a station ceases electricity generation, and how quickly fuel can be removed. Accelerated defueling will test the capacity of EDF to remove the fuel, and then the NDA to transport and store the fuel safely at Sellafield (a UK nuclear decommissioning and research campus). A bottleneck at any point in this process could have repercussions across the defueling programme," the NAO said.
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If all of this was not alarming enough for the taxpayer, it's worth considering that EDF is also building a new nuclear power station set to [10]provide around 7 per cent of the UK's electricity .
In 2019, [11]the government announced it would be £2bn over budget and miss its completion deadline. Since then [12]another six-month delay to June 2026 has been announced together with a cost increase of £500m. ®
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[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-57227918
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/25/hinkley_point_delayed_and_overbudget/
[12] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nuclearpower-edf-idUSKBN29W0NV
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Ahhh, yes, privatisation. EDF could just walk away and what could one do about it?
How about seize Hinkley Point C?
Great funding model
The French state pockets the profits from selling electricity whilst they're operating, then the British taxpayer pays to clean up the waste!
(Not blaming France for doing this, rather it's one of the many consequences of UK governments trying to pretend that nuclear power was part of a free market, rather than being something that needs to be paid for by the state - precisely because you can't just convert the power stations into luxury flats afterwards like they did in Battersea)
Dilemma
> Reverse this trend of overspending, says watchdog
Wait a second, how do we scratch the backs of all our mates if we don't overspend? Being rich and influential costs money!
Re: Dilemma
> 2 thumbs down
Hey look, we have two career politicians among the commentators...
Unless it's some starry-eyed idealist youngsters who still believes their father can't possibly be wrong or do bad things, and that their sacred filial duty is to blindly trust him whatever the circumstances.
The Lakes with Simon Reeve
Has a great segment on Sellafield. Gets to go in and has a tour where we've not seen before. Somewhat terrifying that there's containers at the bottom of tanks just rotting away.... :-(
Re: The Lakes with Simon Reeve
That's in the "legacy ponds" that are related to the early days of the nuclear weapons program; all that was important then was recovery of plutonium.
Things are much better when you look at current spent fuel processing and reactor decommissioning. BBC 4's "Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield" gave some great coverage of this.
store the fuel safely at Sellafield
When they really mean "store the fuel at Sellafield" - safely not really a part of that sentence
A lot of people are uneasy about nuclear not for reasons of "huge scary nuclear explosion" (though 3 mile island, Chernobyl etc. not good for nuclear PR) but because of ever increasing expense of decommissioning, the costs always seem to increase and increase unfettered (and as other commentards have said, the station builders / designers walk away inconvenienced by those costs), and that there is no genuinely safe way* to get rid of the nuclear waste - just hoping that future generations have a better solution to the problem is far from ideal.
*I'm aware various proposals exist, all I have seen are flawed. Please point me to a viable solution I may have missed as would love to see one.
Re: store the fuel safely at Sellafield
"Nuclear power is cheap ..."
comparatively, to build and operate on a per unit produced basis.
Total cost of ownership from concept through to returning a green field, not so much. Some of the waste has a half life in the thousands of years, not just your grandchildren who are going to be paying to look after it.
why can't they just do some upgrades instead?
why can't they just do some upgrades instead?
Wouldn't it cost LESS to do some refits, repairs, and upgrades to EXISTING systems?
'Shirley' it makes a LOT more economic sense for the electricity to pay for the retrofit over a couple of decades (including the storage of radioactive 'old reactor parts' and nuclear waste) than to just tear it down and pay for it all through tax money...
The refit/repair/upgrade path means it PAYS FOR ITSELF and continues to supply needed electricity. Win-Win
And yes, I HAVE operated nuclear reactors. I pretty much know how they work, I've worked with radioactive material, done many contamination surveys with radiacs and swipes, worked in high radiation areas, and wore different types of dosimeters depending on the conditions. And I'll yell it from the cheap seats if I have to, that NUCLEAR ELECTRICITY MAKES SENSE. It should not just be "decomissioned" because SOME people FEAR it.
Re: why can't they just do some upgrades instead?
The problem with the AGRs is that the graphite core has reached end-of-life in four reactors (2 closed, 2 closing this year), with the others getting closer. There is no practicable way to replace the graphite. The reactors have all run well beyond their design life as it is.
There was a proposal to build a Thorium reactor at Wylfa (an old Magnox site) and use it to extend the life of the generators and transformers, but it was not possible to get funding.
Don't worry, all those electric cars that are being planned are going to ensure that coal-based generators will be severely swamped, and as for wind, well I'll get a kick out of seeing how many people have to stay home because their car didn't charge enough during the night.
Without nuclear, we as a society can kiss goodbye to all the power-hungry amenities we have grown used to. There will not be enough juice to power the fridge, the freezer, the aircon, the TV box, the laptop and two smartphones per person, and on top of that, two electric cars per household.
Because people don't want nuclear, but they do want all the gadgets and "smart" doorbells and all the rest.
In 1950, people had a fixed-line telephone, a TV set, a radio, a fridge and, maybe, a washing machine and a dryer. Plus a few lightbulbs. If we go back to that, we could probably do without nuclear. But today ? And IoT on top of all the stuff we have ?
There's no way we can make do without nuclear. Fusion would be better, but that's 30 years away, as we all know.
Re: why can't they just do some upgrades instead?
Cracking of the graphite core of the AGRs is the main restriction of the reactors lifetime, and it isn't realistically possible to refit or upgrade these. You would basically have to build an entire new reactor, but first having to wait until the old one is decommissioned. It's quicker and cheaper to build the new one next door, and take the time to decommission the old one, which is what is being done.
Ah the grand old Tory mantra
Privatise the profits, socialise the losses
aka I own this pile of turd and profit from selling it to rose gardeners, you pay to clean up after they stop buying me.
Transportation of fuel to Sellafield
If you ask me, the best thing for the NDA to do would be to subcontract the fuel transportation to Hermes. The packages with the fuel would then just vanish off the face of the earth and we'd not have to worry about it ever again.
Ahhh, yes, privatisation. EDF could just walk away and what could one do about it?
Central planning with an agenda further than the end of one's nose are not without its disadvantages