Taxpayers could face a hefty bill for decommissioning any nuclear plants built under the Coalition's plan. The cost could reach $80 billion or more.
Decommissioning any plants built under the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan could cost more than $80 billion, and taxpayers would have to foot the bill. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s planned seven nuclear plants, with a likely 14 large-scale reactors, would be publicly owned, so taxpayers would be liable for clean-up costs from the radioactive sites and any accidents during operation. The Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, under construction in Britain, is that country’s first in two decades.
Last month, Britain’s National Audit Office found that the bill to clean up its old nuclear sites, which date back to the 1940s, would be $260 billion. About $200 billion of this is to decommission Britain’s original Sellafield site for weapons and energy generation, with contaminated buildings and radioactive waste. Another $48 billion is to decommission eight other nuclear sites, which now range from 36 to 48 years old, at a cost of $6 billion each. They are set to be handed back by a private operator to the government for decommissioning from 2028. University of NSW energy researcher Mark Diesendorf said international experience showed the cost of decommissioning a nuclear reactor could be roughly in line with its construction cost, which the Coalition has said would be about $9 billion a reactor in Australia.“For a rough approximation, you’re looking at probably the equivalent of the construction cost,” Diesendorf said. If the Coalition’s plan to build 14 nuclear reactors by the mid-2040s is realised, the decommissioning bill would be roughly $82 billion to $125 billion in today’s dollars.of the opposition’s plan that included decommissioning in an overall $331 billion bill to build 14 gigawatts of nuclear generation. However, it is unclear what price was attached to clean-up and whether it is plausible, given Frontier has declined to release the assumptions it use
NUCLEAR ENERGY DECOMMISSIONING COST TAXPAYERS ENVIRONMENT
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