UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning
The UK government is being warned that taxpayers will have to make up a multibillion-pound shortfall to decommission nuclear power stations unless a history of overspending is reversed.
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.
But EDF’s latest cost estimate to decommission the stations in March last year was £23.5bn.
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Something, something, too cheap to meter.
It’s a shame, since we (and everyone else) could use some more nuclear power, but it’s also the only correct decision in the current situation.
If Europe wasn’t so reliant on Russian gas for electricity, the politics of the current situation would be a lot simpler. We needed to be building more nuclear plants, rather than decommissioning them early.
… and buy the uranium from whom?
Canada?
If there’s one thing this war has shown us; it’s that the world needs more Chernobyls. 
Definitely. Just not with Rosatom as a partner.
There’s been less radiation-related deaths from nuclear than from coal over the last 100 years, at a reasonable estimate. We pay disproportionate attention to single big events rather than slow background poisoning.
Let’s get rid of both.
We really, really don’t
And the unimportance of single big events is a less compelling argument if one lives downwind from Three Mile Island- like I do.
Or lived in Fukushima- like my nephew did during that. Teaching English- met his wife there.
That’s weird because coal tends to be less radioactive than Uranium.
Or if one couldn’t collect mushrooms or eat locally shot boar because of Chernobyl contamination, like I did growing up.
At what point does a NIMBY complaint become valid, if the backyard in question is half a continent?
In terms of emissions during normal operations of a power plant, it actually is more radioactive.
But of course that’s an argument against coal burning, not for nuclear energy. And the problem with nuclear power plants isn’t the normal operations anyway.
