Sellafield clean up costs reach £67.5 bn

[biffvernon]

[biffvernon]

Looks like some Germans don't really want their waste back.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/ ... onmentNews

[kenneal - lagger]

It's probably not just Germans! The NIMBYs crawl out of the woodwork anywhere as soon as a nuclear waste repository is suggested although most are happy to use nuclear electricity if none other is available.

[emordnilap]

It's probably not just Germans! The NIMBYs crawl out of the woodwork anywhere as soon as a nuclear waste repository is suggested although most are happy to use nuclear electricity if none other is available.

Again, this reminds me of Monbiot's support for the nuclear technology that is supposed to consume this waste. Why is such a good idea not pursued?

[Little John]

Yes, from my understanding, we already have the technology to keep consuming nuclear waste until there is a very small amount of very radioactive material left with a half life measured in months and years or, at most, tens of years, not millennia. Of course, this means such waste that is left at the end of this process has to be VERY carefully guarded. But, the logistics required for this are measured in a human lifetime and involve vastly smaller volumes of material. And that is the crucial point.

So, why is such technology not implemented? The answer, I would guess, is that it significantly negatively impacts EROEI and so profitability. Either that, or the more vociferous sections of the green movement have a veritable shit-fit any time a solution is proposed which employs yet more of the "demon" technology. Either way, such technological solutions are pushed into the long-grass for some future generation to have to deal with.

[Potemkin Villager]

Wot mate only £67.5 bn!

According to the Grauniad https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... dit-office

" The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to £136bn and Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said."


"Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”."


Apart from anything else it must be a really horrible place to work and I can only imagine the level of stress and mental issues arising from being from being on a mission near impossible in such an unsafe dangerous and toxic environment. Personally I would rather change the warning lights 1,000 feet up on television transmitter masts than have anything to do with clearing up the radioactive shite at Sellafield!