Nuclear costs 'to rise by billions' (UK)

[jpak]

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gG31I-Bek2HrX5WA9znIUoD4bMNA

The cost of cleaning up Britain's ageing nuclear power sites will continue to rise "by some billions" in the short-term, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has said.

In January an official report put the cost at £73 billion, a figure up £12 billion on the previous estimate made in 2003.

Director Jim Morse, a senior NDA official, told the BBC: "I think it's a high probability that in the short-term it will undoubtedly go up. We've still a lot to discover, we haven't started waste retrieval in those parts of the estate where the degradation and radioactive decay has been at its greatest. I'm sure it'll be some billions, I really don't know."

He added: "No-one's done this before. It's very difficult to find another measure. There's nothing in engineering terms that allows you to extrapolate from what you have today."

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[GliderGuider]

1. A LOT of the West's reactors are getting old.

As more decommissioning and cleanup efforts get underway and the cost of the process is revealed, public and commercial sentiment will turn against nuclear power even more. I've always expected that the front and back end economics would be the death blow for nuclear power. No matter how enthusiastic one might be about the safety issues, if the money's not there the project won't fly. As construction costs soar from rising oil prices and capital drains out of the destabilizing global financial system, we will probably see very few new reactors being completed in the coming couple of decades.

[bananas]

2. "Billions and billions", as Carl Sagan used to say.