Fred Pearce brings home the sheer complexity of decommissioning nuclear reactors (10 March, p 46). With 138 shut down and many more to come, it is quite a legacy.
Yet there is a solution for future generations of nuclear plants: build all reactors and their primary cooling circuits underground. Decommissioning would then involve little more than sealing the entrance and walking away. The non-radioactive surface plant could be removed like any other obsolete building or industrial structure.
If decommissioning costs were truly factored in to the lifetime cost of a plant, the higher initial outlay would be fully justified. Pearce talks of costs of half a billion dollars to decommission one reactor, and a decommissioning by-product of half a million tonnes of radioactive waste from a German plant.
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