Anatomy of a fiasco

In regard to Charles Frizzle’s faith in the inevitability of the return of born-again nuclear power advocates (“Decommissioning already causing dissension,” March 29), the many safety issues, such as reactor vessel embrittlement, are only one component of the decommissioning fiasco.

Maine utility ratepayer pocketbook risk assessment is the present of focus of attention, as hundreds of millions of dollars, in addition to the $316 million decommissioning estimate, must be provided as mandated by federal lawl to fund high-level waste storage and disposal.

Costs not included in the restrictive NRC definition of decommissioning include most interim storage, packaging and transportation cost for both reactor vessel and spent fuel high-level wastes, extensive catch-up work in environmental monitoring and assessment, the unknown impact of as yet undetermined residual radioactivity standards, and many other costs not included or underestimated in the most recent TLG decommissioning estimate.

Maine Yankee currently produces more than 1,000 curies of HLW for every hour of operation. While LLW disposal costs are runing well over $5,000 per curie, almost no funding exists other than the DOE mil rate collected for a final geologic repository, to pay the onslaught of interim high-level waste storage, transport, packaging

and administrative charges of the future. H.G. “Skip” Brack Director, Center for Biological Monitoring Hulls Cove