I want to return to the previous point that Kevin_Lowe and Luddite both made, about the "hidden costs" of Nuclear Power Plants. I showed someone that was knowledgeable on the subject in the BAUT Forum (777_geek) this thread, and he had this to say:
I then asked if I had his permission to post this, and he brought up that people here would probably like some other source.
http://www.externe.info/
Have fun.
I've seen no indication that spent fuel handling and storage costs are included in the costs of nuclear power anywhere. Is there any evidence for this?
Glenn sent links that demonstrated that decommissioning costs are paid by the operators in the US during the lifetime of the plant. However the decommissioning itself will be paid by governments. I sent articles which showed that the estimated costs of decommissioning Sellafield in Britain had to be revised upwards 3 times within a single year. So it's not clear that decommissioning fees estimated when the plant is built will prove to be enough at the time it is decommissioned. Britain and Canada leave decommissioning to the government, and it is generally not included in the costs of nuclear power unless explicitly stated. Given the limited experience with decommissioning large nuclear plants, any estimate will be imprecise. Estimates by nuclear agencies can be expected to be low, while those of environmental groups are likely to be high.
The ExternE site you sent the link for is bizarre. It certainly doesn't mention spent fuel handling, storage or decommissioning. Nor does it include government research, construction or other subsidies. It limits itself to health and environmental damages. More significantly, it only assesses health risks from fossil pollutants, none from radiation. Now the risks may be low, but there are undoubtedly radiation risks from nuclear generation. It may even be true that there's more in your coffee, but the fact of the matter is that it's not assessed in this document at all. Here's what they assess:
http://www.externe.info/
In Canada, the CANDUs release enormous amounts of tritium. So Canadian standards for tritium in water are an order of magnitude greater than those permitted in Europe, even though this is one of the wettest parts of the world. It's a problem because it's persistent. The Great Lakes only turn over 1% of their water annually.
So while I expect to see that these risks are much lower than the risks from coal generation, the fact is that they're not assessed at all. They aren't even mentioned.
Here's the Nuclear Energy Agency's assessment of the external costs of nuclear power.
http://www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/2003/nea4372-generation.pdf
It's conclusion is:
Aspects of nuclear energy that often are suggested to entail external costs
include: future financial liabilities arising from decommissioning and dismantling
of nuclear facilities, health and environmental impacts of radioactivity
releases in routine operation, radioactive waste disposal and effects of severe
accidents. It has to be acknowledged that those aspects could become external
costs if adequate funds for discharging them would not be established on a
timely basis, guaranteed through reliable and independent bodies, and included
in the costs (and the market price) of nuclear-generated electricity. However, a
number of mechanisms have been established to provide such funds, thereby
largely internalising these potential externalities, as highlighted in the following
paragraphs.
This leaves me very confused. It claims that radioactive waste disposal, decommissioning and accident insurance are all covered by the nuclear industry. It does mention that the accidental liability coverage is limited but doesn't mention just how limited it is (less than 10% or 1% for Canada in the case of a major accident).
They imply that all OECD countries have mechanisms in place to cover waste disposal and decommissioning.
It has been estimated that decommissioning costs represent some 10 to
15% of overnight capital costs of nuclear power plants. Since decommissioning
activities and expenses occur after the plant has stopped producing electricity,
decommissioning funds are accumulated, as a part of the electricity price, while
the plant is in operation, according to the “Polluter Pays Principle”. In OECD
countries a wide variety of mechanisms and schemes are in place for ensuring
that decommissioning costs are comprehensively estimated and that the
necessary funds are accumulated and securely reserved, to be made available
when needed.
Since I had already looked this up for Canada and Britain and knew they didn't collect decommissioning costs from the power plant, this had me confused. I looked up the NEA's own detailed report about Canada. Nowhere in the discussion about decommissioning does it say that these are covered by the operator:
http://www.nea.fr/html/rwm/wpdd/canada.pdf
So going back to what they said, they didn't actually say it was always covered. They said it might be an externality if it wasn't covered, said it was often covered, and then made a blanket statement about OECD countries that implied that it was always covered in OECD countries.
I'm disappointed. This is deceptive writing designed to confuse people who don't have the time to double-check.
The same kind of "many countries" so "the cost is already internalized" without specifics applies to the discussion of spent fuel storage.
I assure you spent fuel storage costs are not internalized in Canada. Furthermore, we have no idea what we're going to do with it anyway, so how would we assess the costs?. A friend of mine who is an environmental lawyer summarized the decisions the AECL has made so far as "Dig a big hole and seal it, but not so well that you couldn't recover the waste if you wanted to go back and get it later". She says that the only two options we have definitively eliminated are shooting it into space or pitching it into the ocean depths. 30 years of thought went into that decision.
The NEA document then goes on to tackle the issue of radiation effects and state that this is addressed in the ExternE report. They make extensive reference to it. It's not, as I said. So what am I to make of this? Is there an updated ExternE document somewhere? I found a bunch of old ExternE sites still on the web stating that the information was no longer being updated, so maybe the link you sent is another of these?
The NEA document does not mention at all R&D or any direct government subsidies, past or present.
So does the NEA come up in the end with a cost for externalities? Nope. It seems to be a lot of handwaving saying "yeah, yeah, it's all covered", but a closer look says well, not really. This is frustrating.
Just found this anti-nuclear site which summarizes unaccounted costs:
http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/630-31/main.php
Can they be trusted? Like I said, the debate is very polarized. Hard to find a middle ground.
