Posted on 12/01/2024 9:05:44 AM PST by Pontiac
The Department of Energy’s estimated overall liability for failing to dispose of the country’s commercial spent nuclear fuel jumped as much as 10 percent this year, from a range of $34.1 billion to $41 billion in 2023 to a range of $37.6 billion to $44.5 billion in 2024, according to a financial audit of the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) for fiscal year 2024.
The estimated liability excludes $11.1 billion already paid out to nuclear power plant owners and utilities for the DOE’s breach of the standard contract for the disposal of spent fuel (10 CFR Part 961), which required the DOE to begin taking title of spent nuclear fuel for disposal by January 1998. Owners of spent fuel routinely sue the federal government for the continued cost of managing the fuel. The recovered costs are paid out from the Treasury Department’s Judgement Fund and not from the DOE.
According to the audit, conducted by the independent public accounting firm of KPMG, the liability estimate “reflects a range of possible scenarios” regarding the operating life of the current fleet of nuclear power reactors. The estimate is also based on when the DOE thinks it may begin taking spent fuel. In May, the DOE received initial approval (Critical Decision-0) for a consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel that, if constructed, would be operational by 2046.
The Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Fund’s Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Statement Audit was released by the DOE Office of Inspector General on November 14.
The fund: The NWF, which was intended to finance the DOE’s disposal of spent fuel, had a balance of $52.2 billion as of September, according to the KPMG audit.
The NWF was funded through annual fees—initially, $0.001 for every kilowatt hour provided by a nuclear power plant—levied by the DOE on owners and generators of spent fuel. The DOE stopped collecting annual NWF fees, however, in 2014 following an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which found that the DOE failed to justify the continued imposition of the fee following the suspension of the Yucca Mountain repository project.
Yes, he was. Shows exactly the abominations that DEI hiring accomplishes. There might be many good solutions for this problem that could actually make money, like reprocessing the used fuel rods, extracting plutonium, and using that plutonium in new fuel rods. It appears this incompetent criminal didn’t bother to think about stuff like that or even how to deal with the storage problem.
“Building a nuclear waste depository would be a good idea,”
They built one in Nevada, and once the democRATS got in office they banned use of the facility. I forget the name of the place but it is a concrete lined tunnel miles long designed specifically to store nuclear waste.
“spent” nuclear fuel actually contains usable, remaining fissile material
If the USA actually had enough enrichment capacity (and didn’t stupidly shut most of it down) the “spent fuel” could actually be reprocessed, to raise the U235 content, and make it useable again.
Given the coming uranium shortage, it might actually be a reasonably economical source of new nuclear fuel
It should not surprise you that "Too Cheap to Meter" was uttered by a political appointee. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Too Cheap to Meter: A History of the Phrase
People in the industry were unhappy with the statement from the beginning. They called it Overly Optimistic.
People who produce things for sale have a better understanding of the economics of the real world than politicians.
Yucca Mountain.
It was actually a pilot test project. It doesn’t have the capacity to hold all of the spent fuel in the US.
The site was nearly ready to start receiving waste when Nevada Senator Harry Reid killed funding for the project.
He was happy funding the project and bringing fed money in to Nevada until NMBY politics really started rolling about the site.
I was working with a company that supplied equipment used in building the concrete reinforcements for the tunnel. Yea it hot shut down. Harry Reid got what he deserved, but not enough of what he should have got!!
Ocean dumping is a terrible idea with waste that in it’s current form would be water soluble once it’s casing failed. That trench subduction rate is too slow to pull the waste down into the mantle or even the lower crust in the few tens of thousands of years before the fuel casing fails. The sediments you would be dropping the waste into is mud and porous. Not just no buy hell no.
Carter that traitor killed the proper way to process spent fuel. It’s 96% fuel left in the rods only 4% of it is fission products that need to be stored away for a million years in two isotopes cases. Everything else is fuel mass being U235/238 and the actinides which are all fuel in a fast or epithermal spectrum.
France and Russia reprocessed their spent fuel into more fuel and glass waste. France which gets 80% of it’s electric ppower for nuclear has all it’s glass waste under three feet of concrete you can walk over in an area smaller than a soccer pitch. They burn the reprocessed fuel as MOX for more power.
Even without reprocessing the amount of waste for energy produced is miniscule. The lifetime electric need a of the average American using PWR reactors the worst choice would fit inside a 8 ounce soup can. Read that again. Your LIFETIME electricity use spent fuel which is 96% still fuel would fit in a soup can.
A PWR supplying the yearly electric use for an American would make 39 grams of spent fuel per year. It has a density of 15 grams per cubic centimeter. At 75 yrs lifespan yeah smaller than a soup can worth.
If we reprocessed only 4% of that need to be sequestered. You mix the fission products with borosilica glass which is resistant to acids and water even salt water. Then you send it down a well bore into shale,or granite where those rocks have been geologically stable for hundreds of millions of years. You only nred a million for every element to decay to under background levels.
YM in Nevada is the worst choice as a Hydrogeo I will stand against it EVERY time. It’s in porous tuff, ABOVE the water table in a seismic activity zone. They want to put raw unprocessed waste in steel containers No..NO...NO...Fing NOOOO it is a boondoggle of epic proportions.
Spent fuel should be reprocessed and the glass fission products should be put down deep directional drilled bore holes in shale that is at least two miles TVD and geologically stable for at least 100 million years. Far below even the deepest saline aquifer with a mile or more impermeable shales above it.
The horizontal laterals should be drilled toe up, heal down so the toe is up dip from the heal. This means any leechate from the triple cased cemented in package would go towards the closed toe via heat and geopressure drive it would be impossible for it to go against gradient towards the lower heal then make the bend up the drill string which is cemented all the way to the packers aanyways. We have drilled 25,000 foot laterals now into shale that’s nearly five miles worth of down hole space for a waste strong and that’s just one well the industry can stack those 400 feet apart horizontally and 500 horizontally. You could do ten weeks side by side and five layers for a 50 well pad site that’s 236 miles of horizontal well bore space for waste strings every kg of reprocessed waste would fit and more inside a single megapad typical of the oil industry. These would be triple string wells with 12” internal diameter laterals.
Shales that meet the depth and geologically stable for hundreds of millions of years requirements can be found in half a dozen basins in the USA. First choice would be the Midland area Permian basin its Permian age so stable going on 250 million years spent fuel only needs a million we good in the Permian.
Have Elon launch them at the sun....problem solved
bttt
I stand corrected.
Biden has too many weirdoes in his administration to keep track of them all.
Paging Elon and Viveck to the yellow wall phone.
I believe it is complete.
It just needed some testing completed.
But it is not big enough for all of the spent fuel in the US
Silly idea costing more than its worth, besides a lot of the ‘waste’ can be reprocessed into usable fuel. Reopening the Yucca Mountain repository project would solve the problem in its entirety.
Do you put raw sewage into your local water supply? Dumping nuclear waste into the ocean is just as dumb.
“We already built and paid for it in Nevada where it currently sits empty.”
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Now that Harry Reid is gone, maybe we can actually start using it!
Yucca Mountain repository project.
You could in theory buy a lifetime of electricity with being a capital investor in a nuke plant. The S.Koreans have multiple times already not can build new Candu reactors for $2800 per kilowatt capacity in capital expenditure. The fuel costs for a Candu are half what a PWR is around 5 tenths of a cent per kWh , the O&M of a candu per year is in the 1.2 cent per kWh range. So call it 1.8 cents all in plus the initial capex.
Candu last 80 years so more than a typical lifespan in North America. You could if say part of a co-op but one kw capacity for $2800 up front and then your opex and fuel would be 1.8 cents for every kWh produced. You would own that kw and with a capacity factor of 90% on a yearly basis you would own 7884 kWh and are on the hook for 1.8 cents each for those.
Given that the average yearly household use in the USA is 10,800 note household not iindividual. You could buy 2kw of capacity with capex and own 15768 of those kWh per year at 1.8 cents each. Use 1000 sell the other 5700 at market rates which is 5 to 10 cents on the wholesale market. This would offset your O&M and then turn a net gain for you per year of $70 at 5 cents whole sale or $140 at 10 cents. Over the 80 year lifespan you could at 8 cents or more whole sale pay back the initial capex and pay the O&M effectively getting free power for life.
Just for fun
There is ruffly 200,000,000 pounds of spent fuel in the US
Last I saw Elon could launch material into orbit for $10 per KG. $4.45 per pound.
That would be $890,000,000 just to put the waste in orbit.
I have no idea what the cost is to get a Kg out of Earth’s gravity well. I expect it would be a lot more.
Late Sen Read killed the nuclear storage, Yucca mountain project.
Jimmy Carter ordered to stop recycling spend fuel, because, somehow, terrorists could get hold of it and make nukes?!
I would say, recycling is the way to go.
But present status, when all the fuel is sitting in water pools next to power plants, that’s criminal!
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