Nuclear Decommissioning True Costs

That bastion of eco-terrorism the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has updated it’s thinking on the true costs of nuclear decommissioning:

The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommission—or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plant—constructed early in the 1960s for $39 million—cost $608 million. The plant’s spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in. To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year.

It cost in this one case 15 times the cost of building the reactor and five times longer. It notes that it’s previous positions on this had been, ahem, too low.

…the Bulletin’s archives reveal a fairly constant tendency to downplay those costs. In 1988, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission study said utilities should set aside just $100 to $130 million in decommissioning funds per plant, according to the Bulletin article, “Last rites for first commercial reactor.” That article highlighted the era’s bullish feeling toward end-stage nuclear power costs by describing the response to disposal of a decommissioned reactor vessel at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state: To celebrate the 1,000-ton vessel’s arrival via the Columbia River, residents of a nearby city unfurled a “Welcome to Richland” banner.

The irony is of course, that Hanford is currently the MOST polluted nuclear plant in the USA – with unknown and increasing impacts on the environment and citizens. Note the chilling uncertainty in the future scenario – at each plant – since we do not have a national safe repository for nuclear waste it’s worth putting in bold:

The plant’s spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in. To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year.

Considering a economic/climate failure in less than 20 years what is the probability that we have serious problems at some of the US nuclear sites in maintaining this safety and security?