To: California Energy Commission Dockets Unit;
Attn: Docket No. 04-IEP-1J
1516 Ninth Street, MS-4
Sacramento, CA 95814-5512
Re: Energy Report: Nuclear Power, 2005 Workshops
Date: August 13th, 2005
From: Russell D. Hoffman, Concerned Citizen, Carlsbad, CA
To The Commission,
As illustrated by the related problems they are having in England (see below), decommissioning San Onofre and Diablo Canyon will cost billions of dollars even if we do a poor job of it, using lots and lots of water to dilute, dilute, dilute and wash everything into the biosphere. If we do a more acceptable job, it is sure to cost at least $25 billion, not including permanent waste disposal of the spent fuel, and even at that huge cost, vast quantities of highly radioactive particles will be washed into our biosphere in the process. Nuclear "clean-up" is never very clean.
Furthermore, the longer we wait, the more radioactive the sites will be, and the more it will cost to decommission them and/or the more water they'll need to wash away enough radioactive particles so they can remove various irradiated pumps, pipes, valves and vessels.
This letter should be considered a part of my larger submission this day to the commission.
A copy of this letter will be provided in written form to the Commission as part of a complete statement for Docket No. 04-IEP-1J.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA
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27 Guardian Unlimited: £8bn added to nuclear shutdown bill
Mark Oliver and agencies
Thursday August 11, 2005
[Sellafield nuclear processing plant]
Sellafield nuclear processing plant. Photograph: PA
Decommissioning Britain's 20 ageing nuclear power stations will
cost at least £8bn more than originally estimated, according to
research published today.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said it thought the
cost of decommissioning would be £56bn, compared to the £48bn
previously anticipated.
If the decision is taken to reclassify plutonium as waste,
rather than an asset, another £10bn could be added to the total
cost, according to the NDA, which also said it hoped to speed up
the decommissioning process.
Article continues
The NDA, which has a budget of around £2bn a year, is a quango
that was set up by the government in April this year under the
Energy Act 2004 to take on the responsibility of the UK's nuclear
legacy. Its job is to oversee the clean-up and decommissioning of
the country's nuclear power stations as safely and
cost-effectively as possible.
News of the escalating cost of decommissioning comes after
confidential Whitehall documents were leaked to the media
earlier this year in which the case for a new generation of
nuclear power stations was touted.
The disclosure of a higher prediction on the cost of
decommissioning comes in NDA's first report, a draft strategy on
what approach it should take. A final strategy report will be
submitted to the government by the end of March next year after
a huge public consultation process that was launched today and
will last until November 11.
Clean-up costs 'to rise'
The NDA's chairman, Sir Anthony Cleaver, said today that the
costs of clean-up and decommissioning, were "already substantial
and if other countries' experiences are a guide, projected costs
will almost certainly rise". Currently there are 12 nuclear
power stations in operation but only one - Sellafield, in
Cumbria - will not be decommissioned between now and 2023.
Sir Anthony said the NDA hoped decommissioning could be
accelerated, a move which he says would boost safety.
However, it could also impact on jobs at sites such as Dounreay,
in Caithness, northern Scotland. One in five workers in the area
is employed at the site, the decommissioning of which was due to
be completed in 30 years' time. Sir Anthony said the NDA also
wanted to speed up the decommissioning of the ageing Magnox
nuclear plants, from 125 years to 25 years. Sir Anthony
highlighted the four operating Magnox plants: Dungeness, Kent;
Olbury, Gloucestershire; Sizewell, Suffolk, and Wylfa, North
Wales.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We think based on
experience elsewhere in the world it should be possible to
accelerate that process significantly and there are major
benefits we believe in doing that. First of all you obviously
don't have that long period where you have the problem of
security and safety in the storage of that material on the site."
Some argue that new nuclear power stations could help cut the
level of carbon emissions, which have risen recently and are
linked to climate change.
However another view, including that of former environment
minister Michael Meacher, is that it is ridiculous to
contemplate new stations when the problem of what to do with
nuclear waste has yet to be convincingly resolved.
Mr Meacher told Today that the report had underlined the case
for bringing an end to the nuclear power industry, rather than
building new stations.
"Do we actually, with an industry that is the most non-cost
effective, uneconomic in history, want to have a new round of
nuclear build?" he said.
"The fact is, nuclear is neither necessary nor desirable to meet
our climate change targets. It would entail huge economic,
military and environmental risks which should be avoided."
But John Mills, a member of the Nuclear Industry Association,
told the programme: "The liabilities that are being dealt with
are the legacy of a nuclear programme which had a large variety
of reactor types and processes, and which had from time to time
to meet various strategic imperatives.
"A future programme of nuclear build can be characterised as a
relatively small programme of smaller, simpler plants."
Dr Mills acknowledged, however, that there was as yet no settled
view on how to deal with waste.
Sir Anthony said he believed that underground storage of waste
was the best option. "I think at the moment our view would be
that an underground repository is the best solution, that seems
to be the one that combines most of the aspects of safety and
security in the most effective way."
Intermediate and high-level nuclear waste needs to be isolated
from human contact for up to 200,000 years. Low-level waste, of
which there is by far the greatest volume, includes everything
from gloves and overalls to large pieces of equipment and
concrete. The only place to store this in Britain is in Drigg,
Cumbria, which will be full by 2050. There are also fears that
this site could be flooded between 500 and 5,000 years after it
is closed.
In May this year, a leak the size of an Olympic swimming pool of
radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid
forced the closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant. The
leak was not dangerous to the public but was expensive to repair
and an investigation found "significant deficiencies" at the
plant.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited ¿ Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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