31 March 2006news.telegraphCharles Clover
The cost of decommissioning Britain's nuclear power plants has risen to £56 billion - £12 billion more than previously thought, it was announced yesterday.
The taxpayer will have to pick up most of the bill as the £500 million-a-year income from the Magnox power stations will dry up when the last state-owned plant closes in 2010, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said.
The rise in costs is being seen by environmentalists as a blow to Tony Blair's proposal to replace Britain's existing power stations, which is being examined along with other ways of generating electricity in the future.
The new estimated costs were published by the authority, set up last year to handle the breaking up and cleaning of 20 civil nuclear sites including Sellafield and Dounreay, as the Government confirmed it was to sell off British Nuclear Group, switching control of the Sellafield site to the private sector.
Sir Anthony Cleaver, chairman of the authority, said: "These are the best estimates that responsible engineers can come up with."
Reasons for the escalating costs of decommissioning included an allowance of £7.5 billion for soil contamination at nuclear sites.
The authority is now hoping to decommission most of its 20 sites in 25 years, rather than the 80 years previously planned. Sir Anthony said he hoped this would be possible as a result of increased competition between contractors.
The authority's plans give a hint of where any future nuclear building might occur.
The first contract for decommissioning will be awarded next year at the low-level nuclear waste repository at Drigg, near Sellafield, Cumbria. Berkeley, Bradwell, Hinkley Point A, Dungeness A and Sizewell A will have contracts awarded in 2008.
Public consultations indicated that people around some power stations, such as Wylfa on Anglesey, would be happy to have a new nuclear power station. But they ruled out Dungeness, in Kent, as the site of any future nuclear station, because of accelerating coastal erosion, and also Trawsfynydd, in the Snowdonia National Park.
All the plans for decommissioning rely on the building of a new repository for lower level nuclear waste, a report on which is due this summer.
It should take 75 years to decommission Sellafield, the site with the highest level of contamination. The £5 billion decommissioning contract will be the main income any buyer of the plant can expect.
Tony Juniper, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We believe nuclear power cannot answer the challenge of climate change because new power stations are going to take so long to get built and because there are other things we could do - such as solar, micro wind and other forms of microgeneration - which would deliver much bigger gains sooner."
Meanwhile, the Government came under renewed criticism over its failure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions when official figures showed that Britain's emissions rose for the third consecutive year.
 29 March 2006: Beckett dodges blame over carbon pledge |
