Nuclear costs spiral out of control

The cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations is set to spiral out of control following a startling admission from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

Current estimates for the total cost of decommissioning are £73 billion, already £12 billion higher than five years ago.

However, Jim Morse, a senior director at the NDA, has publicly declared that in his opinion, there is a ‘high probability’ that costs will continue to spiral upwards, especially in the short term.

The admission has been met with anger from environmental campaign groups.

Greenpeace’s head of nuclear campaigns, Ben Ayliffe, has raised concerns that potential operators of the government’s newly planned nuclear plants will have no obligation to pay clean-up costs for the radioactive waste produced.

Friends of the Earth are equally dismayed, arguing that the government must consider ‘radical new approaches’ to the UK’s energy needs if the country is to have an environmentally and economically sustainable future.

Neil Crumpton, a campaigner with FotE, said that the government must immediately put together a ‘comprehensive programme of action.’

Over the next 100 years the UK will have to decommission 19 nuclear plants, with some of these plants already described as ‘dangerous’.

There is currently 1,345 cubic metres of high level toxic waste, and 350,000 cubic metres of medium level toxic waste awaiting disposal in temporary facilities. Both forms of waste are extremely harmful to humans.