UK Nuclear Site's Clean-Up Costs Rise To £136 Billion (theguardian.com) 34
The cost of cleaning up the U.K.'s largest nuclear site, "is expected to spiral to £136 billion" (about $176 billion), according to the Guardian, creating tension with the country's public-spending watchdog.
Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.
Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.
Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.
"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "
"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk".
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium.
Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said.
Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.
"Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... "
"One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
UK is no longer in EUrope
They Brexited
Re:Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Europe's most hazardous industrial site (Score:2)
From the start... (Score:5, Informative)
Why are costs always higher than projected? (Score:3)
Up-front starting costs, yearly maintenance costs, and up-front shutdown costs, are all known values at the time the design is finalized.
The story says the "known values" in 2019 were under current estimates by 20%. The reality is that the upfront cost projections are all based on theoretical models because there is no real experience with many of the costs. How do you accurately estimate the cost of permanent storage when no one has ever actually built a permanent storage facility. Your estimates are little more than educated guesses by people with an interest in low-balling the cost.
Re: (Score:3)
We'll be happy to explain to the rest of the world how to do it if they ask.
https://www.nwmo.ca/# [www.nwmo.ca]
Hurry up guys! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"It'll be safe in a few hundred years"
Uh huh. And even if I believed that (the worst stuff actually stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years), we haven't managed to reliably store such waste for mere decades. Telling me we'll be fine storing it for 10x as long? Fuck off.
Humans have a lot of trouble planning much more than a couple of decades out, and that's for people who are really abnormally good at it.
Call me skeptical (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
they could bury the whole site under 100 feet of concrete for that much money.
A very tall parking lot is not the desired outcome.
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The problem is below, not above. Then it still has to go somewhere.
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Burying it in concrete would be a disaster, because all the waste would leak out of the bottom.
That's the core of the problem. It's already leaking badly, and it keeps getting worse as the site deteriorates. The people trying to clean it up are at great risk, and progress is slow.
Re: (Score:2)
Distribute it to millions of locations to solve the long term problem by putting small portions of it in the backyard of everybody who has and continues to advocate for nuclear power as the solution to all our energy problems!
The never advocate the NEW plants be put in their backyards either...
Coal on the other hand has exposed all of us to more radiation than nuclear and we've been relatively ok with that. If gas had to be leaded we'd all still be 12 IQ points lower and likely denying global warming...
Need to reprocess the waste not bury it (Score:2)
Considerable fuel can be recovered from so called nuclear waste products. Much better, lower risk, and cheaper long term that storing it somewhere for the future generations to deal with.
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Not economically though, that's the issue.
And if it was economical, they wouldn't start with with Sellafield because just getting the waste out of there is a hazardous job.
A lot of it isn't spent fuel, it's other high level waste that can't be recycled.
Sellafield is a reprocessing plant (Score:2)
Sellafield is a reprocessing plant. As TFS says, it's the world's largest store of plutonium, and that's because it's one of the world's biggest reprocessing facilities where they extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. The waste they're talking about is the really nasty stuff left over after the useful stuff has been extracted using the PUREX process. It's very nasty chemically as well as radioactively, due to all the acids and solvents required to separate the metals (particularly uranium and pluton
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They have a ton of mixed waste from early reactors and weapon development, not the clean fuel assemblies normal reprocessing plants are build for.
Maybe for a couple 10s of Billions you could make a reprocessing plant for the slop they have to work with, but will that be cheaper?
Send it to China (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
China has plenty of their own crap that they can't deal with already
Anti-nuclear sentiment (Score:3)
I am - and always have been - in favour of nuclear power. Somewhat. /. is demonstrably misguided.
But the unbridled enthusiasm ('nuclear for life') displayed by many on
Another example of the stupidity of nuclear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
More of an example of "failing to plan is planning to fail." The waste was never properly stored or managed, and as time went on the problem simply became more complex and ultimately complicated to resolve. Inconsistent commitment and support made the problem orders of magnitude worse.
Re:Another example of the stupidity of nuclear. (Score:4, Insightful)
Plutonium is a resource (Score:2)
You can make energy out of it. big wealth!