[FooHentai]

"Decommissioning options for a retired nuclear plant may be chosen based on availability of decommissioning funds, operation of other reactors at the same site, or availability of waste disposal facilities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFSTOR

Today, about half the EoL reactors in the USA are on the SAFSTOR track instead of the one where they are immediately decommissioned. There is a single waste disposal site available, WIPP, that will close in the next couple of years. Only a handful of reactors on the SAFSTOR track are there because they sit adjacent to operational reactors.

So plans are one thing, reality is quite another.

[mlyle]

Nuclear power plants in the US have been charged massive fees to establish funds for decommissioning. The cost is baked into the energy, even if the political will to spend the funds and store the waste isn't.

https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html

[bigfudge]

That isn't true in Europe, but even accepting your argument: this is a problem for the nuclear industry. Unless we can see evidence that the system as a whole (i.e. nuclear industry plus government of various levels of corruption) can function to process and store waste safely, this is a black mark against the nuclear industry. It doesn't matter if this is 'unfair' in some sense... at the end of the day the waste will exist and after 40+ years there is no evidence of a combined political-industrial system with the capacity to do the right thing.

[sofixa]

You're wrong, here's all the details for Hinkley Point C:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hinkley-point-c-f...

EDF have already planned spent fuel storage and decomissioning, and it's provided for in the prices.

That's just one example, but it's been the standard practice across nuclear projects for decades now in most of Europe.

> Unless we can see evidence that the system as a whole (i.e. nuclear industry plus government of various levels of corruption) can function to process and store waste safely, this is a black mark against the nuclear industry.

It is being done today, and there are multiple projects that intend to improve upon it ( by recycling or cold underground permanent storage). What kind of evidence do you need? For it to be done over a 100 years? It'd be far too late then.