Sellafield clean-up cost reaches £67.5bn

posh*spice

The cost of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear waste site has reached £67.5bn with no sign of when the cost will stop rising, according to a report.
The Public Accounts Committee's report said deadlines to clean the Cumbria site had been missed, leaving crucial decommissioning projects over budget.
It suggested successive governments have failed to "get to grips" with the hoards of waste stored at the site.

The Public Accounts Committee report follows criticisms by the National Audit Office (NAO) in November.

The NAO said rundown buildings posed "intolerable risks to people and the environment".
Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the committee, said an "enormous legacy" of nuclear waste had been allowed to build up at the plant.
"Over decades, successive governments have failed to get to grips with this critical problem, to the point where the total lifetime cost of decommissioning the site has now reached £67.5 billion, and there's no indication of when that cost will stop rising," she said.
"Furthermore, now that Cumbria County Council has ruled out West Cumbria as the site of the proposed geological disposal facility, a solution to the problem of long-term storage of the waste is as far away as ever."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-21298117

Unbelievable on so many levels

posh*spice

Meanwhile

Centrica is believed to be ready to pull out of plans to build nuclear power stations in Britain – clearing the way for Chinese investors to step in. The expected exit would mean the government’s push for a new generation of nuclear power stations would proceed without any big British company involved.
Centrica, owner of British Gas, has the option of taking a 20 per cent stake in four new reactors – two at Hinkley Point in Somerset and two at Sizewell in Suffolk – in a partnership with EDF, the French state-owned utility. These would be the first nuclear power plants to be built in the UK since 1995.
But a person familiar with the matter said senior management had concluded that “new nuclear” was “not right” for Centrica, amid concerns about rising costs since the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. A “decision is imminent,” he said.

Unbelievable.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96d1e960-6e1e-11e2-983d-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Jug5USax

wymondham

Is this part of 'electrcity so cheap it cant be measured' that we were told about with nuclear?

shaggydoo

What I find unbelievable is that people worry about traces of horse meat in the food chain while this pile of carp sits in Sellafield. #WhatisLife #ModernTimes


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-21253673

CLAPTON

lots of 'unbelieveable things'

number of people killed on the roads

number of people poisoned by diesel particles from exhausts

number of deaths at Stafford hospital

more people killed by falling from horses than died from (non natural) nuclear radiation

lack of proper medical cover at hospitals over weekends

of course that doesn't mean we don't nee to address the issue of nuclear waste but we need a sense of proportion

shaggydoo

CLAPTON wrote: »

of course that doesn't mean we don't nee to address the issue of nuclear waste but we need a sense of proportion

Doesn't £68 billion give you some sense of proportion?

CLAPTON

shaggydoo wrote: »

Doesn't £68 billion give you some sense of proportion?

not without knowing what is actually means

obviously life time costs are as long a piece of string


so if 68 billion was a yearly cost I would be appalled

if it is a 1,000 year cost then 68million per year doesn't seem so much

can you tell us what it means?

Wookster

Not million per your post above but billion.

What is scary about this is that it is not actually known what the full life cycle disposal costs of the nuclear waste actually are.

Personally i don't see a problem with digging a very deep hole and slugging the waste down the bottom as they do in some Scandinavian countries. The nuclear waste will be around long after humans have died out.

grizzly1911

Wookster wrote: »

Not million per your post above but billion.

What is scary about this is that it is not actually known what the full life cycle disposal costs of the nuclear waste actually are.

Personally i don't see a problem with digging a very deep hole and slugging the waste down the bottom as they do in some Scandinavian countries. The nuclear waste will be around long after humans have died out.

68000 000 000 / 1000 = 68 000 000 doesn't it?

I wonder where the waste form French and Chinese built plants, here,
will be left?

I personally don't think it should be left to pirate companies and certainly not foreign owned companies. Yes they may need to be involved for key parts but not overall ownership.

Personally I don't see a current alternative to nuclear unless all the green tree huggers are happy to simply turn the lights off, unplug their tablets one last time and hang up the iphone. That is watt will happen renewables just can't give resilient supply in the volumes we need.

Percy1983

I really can't see the problem with nuclear, its the cleanest energy we can do in the volumes needed.

chris_m

grizzly1911 wrote: »

That is watt will happen renewables just can't give resilient supply in the volumes we need.

Was that intentional?
If not, it was a beautifully apposite typo