martin, I suggest you check www.uic.com.au/nip13.htm if you reckon UIC is a bit short on relevant facts in that area! How many examples do you want?

UIC, all I want is one example.

In listing a dozen retired reactors, that page of yours merely quotes size, location, the years they were in operation, along with some commentary about dismantlement.

You mention, very briefly, the Berkeley reactor in the UK and that it is currently being prepared for an extended period of “Care and Maintenance” (scheduled to start around 2006) now 16 years after it was closed. – fine, at what cost?

Like everybody, I have concerns about safety but even on the simplest economic grounds there seems to be even greater uncertainty.

My question, for the third time, is can you provide any example of a nuclear power station that has been decommissioned and had all its waste safely disposed of for only 10 - 15% of its total cost?

Just give me the name of the station and if you don’t have accounts of the associated costs, I will try to find them.

In USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. Is this sufficient? Does this fully fund the entire cost of the safe, permanent disposal of all waste?

Just like renewable energy options, I just want to know how much it all really costs.

The premise behind this article is that the atmosphere is a resource which can be freely used. Or in economic terms, that air pollution is not an externality.

This premise is incorrect.

The coal power generation business in Australia does not pay all its true costs and naturally they do not support a trading scheme which attempts to correct this.

Regarding cots of nuclear power reactor decommissioning, most of the info I have is in the UIC Decommissioning paper mentioned. The 10-15% estimate is not my figure, but I dont think it is far out. You can compare the OECD 2003 survey figures with $1500-2000 per kW for those second-genration reactors. Costs for Magnox units such as Berkeley will be way higher due to the carbon radwaste, which is one reason why none have been built for about 40 years.

Re US levy this would seem to be sufficient from the figures quotd.

For more detailed info see http://www.world-nuclear.org/wgs/wg.htm#decom