Costs of Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants
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Nuclear Development 2016 Costs of Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants NEA Nuclear Development Costs of Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants © OECD 2016 NEA No. 7201 NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT The OECD is a unique forum where the governments of 34 democracies work together to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of globalisation. The OECD is also at the forefront of efforts to understand and to help governments respond to new developments and concerns, such as corporate governance, the information economy and the challenges of an ageing population. The Organisation provides a setting where governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies. The OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Commission takes part in the work of the OECD. OECD Publishing disseminates widely the results of the Organisation’s statistics gathering and research on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as the conventions, guidelines and standards agreed by its members. This work is published on the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) was established on 1 February 1958. Current NEA membership consists of 31 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Commission also takes part in the work of the Agency. The mission of the NEA is: – to assist its member countries in maintaining and further developing, through international co-operation, the scientific, technological and legal bases required for a safe, environmentally friendly and economical use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; – to provide authoritative assessments and to forge common understandings on key issues, as input to government decisions on nuclear energy policy and to broader OECD policy analyses in areas such as energy and sustainable development. Specific areas of competence of the NEA include the safety and regulation of nuclear activities, radioactive waste management, radiological protection, nuclear science, economic and technical analyses of the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear law and liability, and public information. The NEA Data Bank provides nuclear data and computer program services for participating countries. In these and related tasks, the NEA works in close collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, with which it has a Co-operation Agreement, as well as with other international organisations in the nuclear field. This document and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found online at: www.oecd.org/publishing/corrigenda. © OECD 2016 You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgment of the OECD as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to [email protected]. Requests for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be addressed directly to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) at [email protected] or the Centre français d'exploitation du droit de copie (CFC) [email protected]. FOREWORD Foreword The average age of the worldwide operating nuclear fleet in 2015 was close to 30 years, with nearly 250 reactors more than 30 years old and some 75 beyond 40 years old. While refurbishments for the long-term operation or lifetime extension of nuclear power plants (NPPs) have been widely pursued in recent years, the number of plants to be decommissioned is nonetheless expected to increase in the coming years, particularly in the United States and Europe. These numbers demonstrate the scale of the task ahead, which will make decommissioning a sizeable market, expanding over the years in volume. As past experience has shown, decommissioning can be carried out in a safe manner. However, examples of the fully completed decommissioning of commercial power reactors are limited and no fleet effect can yet be observed. Of the nearly 150 power reactors that have ceased operation, 16 of these have undergone complete decommissioning, most of which are primarily in the United States. Other reactors, mainly in Europe, are at advanced stages of decommissioning, and will allow for valuable experience to be gained. It is important to understand the costs of decommissioning projects in order to develop coherent and cost-effective decommissioning strategies, realistic cost estimates based on decommissioning plans from the outset of operation and mechanisms to ensure that future decommissioning expenses can be adequately covered. These issues have become increasingly important in recent years. At the national level, several studies on decommissioning costs have been carried out in individual countries, but these usually reflect national policy choices and practices. Cost estimates are therefore not directly comparable across countries. Overall, considerable variability exists in the format, content and practice of cost estimation both within and across countries. Initiatives have been launched by international and intergovernmental bodies on this subject, and useful reports have been produced over the years, describing national decommissioning approaches or making suggestions on how to analyse decommissioning costs. However, apart from the European region, where the Decommissioning Funding Group (DFG) of the European Commission (EC) has assessed decommissioning funding and its financial security, no recent comprehensive overviews of an international dimension have been undertaken on the state of knowledge of decommissioning costs and funding practices across countries. The last reviews of this kind, based on empirical country data, were carried out by the Nuclear Energy Agency in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2004 (see NEA, 2003 and IAEA, 2004). During the last decade, the outlook in terms of nuclear decommissioning has evolved considerably. Today, experience being accrued internationally is providing new sources of information from real estimations or actual costs. Up-to-date analyses of the actual costs of decommissioning are increasingly being sought, particularly among regulators, so as to enable benchmarking of decommissioning cost estimations against actual experience. The recent joint NEA/EC/IAEA publication on the International Structure for Decommissioning Costing (ISDC) of Nuclear Installations introduces a standard in this regard, as well as a structure and itemisation of decommissioning costs to reflect experience COSTS OF DECOMMISSIONING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, NEA No. 7201, © OECD 2016 3 FOREWORD accumulated and to incorporate new IAEA radioactive waste specifications. The ISDC provides general guidance on developing decommissioning cost estimates and, through its itemisation, a tool for either cost estimations or for mapping estimates onto a standard, common structure for comparison purposes. Against this backdrop, the present study was initiated under the auspices of the NEA Committee for Technical and Economic Studies on Nuclear Energy Development and the Fuel Cycle (NDC). The Ad Hoc Expert Group on Costs of Decommissioning (COSTSDEC) was established in early 2013 to carry out the work, with the overall objective of producing a report on the costs of decommissioning of nuclear power plants and funding practices adopted across NEA member countries. The principal objectives of this study were outlined in the NDC Final Programme of Work for 2013-2014 as follows: · To gather and assess available knowledge on completed decommissioning projects from different countries and, to the extent possible, to consider how related cost estimates have varied over time; how uncertainties were taken into account and what contingencies were built into the planning; and what have been the key factors driving costs. · To review economic methodologies and related aspects for the management of NPP decommissioning in NEA member countries and, if possible, in selected other countries, including the funding mechanisms in place or under consideration, how the funds are managed and the extent to which they have increased. · To consider a selected set of decommissioning programmes, either ongoing or prospective, to perform a review of related cost estimates and to define, to the extent possible, cost categories and estimates for high-level processes with the aim