Decommissioning, Demolition
and Waste Disposal
Unlike most other forms of energy production, the effects of nuclear power continue long after the power has stopped being produced. The extremely long lives of radioactive material are well known: uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, about the same age as the Earth!
The processes necessary to clean up after the reactor has finally closed down (after about 40 years of production) are summarised below. [Storm]
| Process |
|---|
| During a cooling period of 30-100 years, the reactor will be decommissioned and some cleaning up begun. During this time, the reactor and its contents will have to be safeguarded against leaks, terrorism and sea-level rise. |
| After a long cooling period of maybe 100 years, the radioactive parts of the reactor site can be dismantled. |
| The spent fuel must be stored for at least 30 years after removal in heavily protected facilities. A single reactor in its lifetime produces radioactivity equal to 10,000 exploded nuclear weapons. |
.
• Spent fuel packaging in containers able to last for many thousands of
years, in contact with hot and salty water under continuous nuclear radiation.
• Construction of a stable geological repository, making possible to isolate
the spent fuel from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.
• Reclamation of the uranium mine, an area of up to about 100 square kilometers.
The tailings, containing large amounts of chemically and physically mobilised
radioactive species, have to be isolated from the groundwater and the air.
Financial Cost
The financial cost of the decommissioning of Britain's 14 GW nuclear power stations is estimated at at least €100 billion/£75 billion and probably much more [Storm]. Allied with the recessions and increased costs that are likely to face us from peak oil and global warming, it is not a cheerful future.
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