Nuclear Headache: Task of Decommissioning Plants Is Herculean

[kristopher]

Nuclear Headache: Task of Decommissioning Plants Is Herculean
By Gerald Traufetter

The dismantling of Germany's nuclear power plants will be one of the greatest tasks of the century as the country moves to phase out atomic energy. It will take at least until 2080 to complete the job. But what happens if energy utility companies who own the facilities go bust before the work is done?

<snip>

What the representatives of the people would rather not talk about, though, is the decommissioning of Germany's nuclear power plants. They were once the cathedrals of industrial progress. But now their cooling towers and domes have become widely visible symbols of human folly.

According to the latest calculations by the German Environment Ministry, the operation and decommissioning of the country's reactors will produce 173,442 cubic meters (over 6.1 million cubic feet) of low to medium-level radioactive waste that has to be stored underground. On top of that, there are 107,430 cubic meters of radioactive detritus from government institutions.

It's a monumental task that the Germans won't complete until 2080 "at the earliest," says nuclear expert Michael Sailer from the Öko-Institut, a non-profit research and consulting association for sustainable technology in Berlin. "After all, these are conservative estimates without any leeway for setbacks."

No Smooth Sailing

But it doesn't look as if things will go smoothly. On the contrary, the phasing out of nuclear power is accompanied by the agonizing challenge of decommissioning existing reactors: Eight nuclear power plants that were rapidly taken offline at the behest of the German government in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster have to be dismantled concurrently, followed by an additional nine facilities by the end of 2022.

There is still no roadmap for the decommissioning...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-faces-tough-decisions-as-it-dismantles-nuclear-plants-a-899063.html

[madokie]

1. At any rate its rate payers and tax payers who shoulder the cost

After 40 some odd years you'd think they'd have it all figured out but I guess since they were blinded with the income they've enjoyed they didn't worry with tomorrow. The whole nuclear experiment was flawed from the word go. They told us that by the time they needed to they'd have it figured out how to safely deal with the waste, that didn't happen. They also told us that by the time they'd need to decommission the plant they'd have that all worked out too. Most of us fighting to stop the one PSO was trying to force on us, by crook or by lie I might add, didn't believe them and I'm sure the ones of us left now still don't.
By using the lie of safe and sane use of splitting atoms was the way to go stymied the research that was and should have been done on alternates, not only the research and development but also the building out of said alternates as they were developed. We've lost a lot of valuable time in all this nuclear is the way of the future bullshit. Its time to put that lie to rest and start working on the alternates so we can start this long process of shutting the nuclear power plants down and decommissioning them. they will be a blight on our landscape for years and years.
Enough already

[kristopher]

2. Seems like just yesterday we were told what a minor thing decommissioning was...

I'd urge everyone to look the article in the OP over for better information.

[madokie]

3. And I'm sure we will be again come tomorrow

I've gotten to where I don't pay any attention to any more of that whitewashing. It was all a lie years ago and its still bullshit today, likewise will it be tomorrow.
Kinda' like numbnuts said, you might fool me once, can't get fooled again, Something like that anyway.