Thread by @simonahac

🤓if you know me, you know i’m an energy nerd.

i’ve visited coal & gas power stations, wind & solar farms, geothermal & hydro projects. (plus a few nuclear plants, but yet to get inside one.)

i was recently near the decommissioned yankee rowe plant and thought i'd pay a visit…

the yankee rowe nuclear power station (massachusettes) was one of the first commercial power reactors in the world.

the 185MW pressurised water reactor operated for more than 31 years (1960-1992).

in 1992 it was prematurely closed due to 'reactor pressure vessel embrittlement concerns'.

decommissioning was finally completed in 2007, some 15 years after the plant stopped operating, leaving _almost_ no trace of the former power station.

unfortunately 16 casks of radioactive waste remain on site.

the reactor's spent fuel and highly-level radioactive waste are encased in stainless steel containers and entombed in 4m high, steel-lined concrete casks weighing more than 110 tonnes each.

by law, the US DoE is responsible for removing the casks and 'disposing' of them in a federal repository, however no such repository exists.

(32+ years after the project began, the $10bn+ yucca mountain facility in nevada is incomplete. many believe it will never be used.)

so, for now the waste remains on site — and every few years the yankee atomic electric company sues the government for the costs of running the facility.

…it costs taxpayers ~$10m a year to maintain 24x7 armed guards around these casks.

bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/01/…

…so the closest i got to the site of the "fully decommissioned" yankee rowe power station was the carpark, complete with more than a dozen cars, more than 27 years after the last watt was generated.

a booming voice over loudspeakers & an armed guard sent me on my way.

one lesson i learnt is that if countries can't sort out long term nuclear waste repositories, legacy sites will be locked away for decades and someone (taxpayers?) will be slugged with massive / long-term security bills.

…a $35.5bn liability in the US.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

if you're keen to learn more about yankee rowe, i highly recommend this wonderful historical video:

(warning: the 1960s nuclear engineering excitement/optimism is infectious.)

…and if you're interested in decommissioning, this very 1990s video (complete with cheesy soundtrack) is a must watch:

ps. while i was in the area, i thought i'd check out the much bigger (620MW) yankee vermont nuclear power station.

it closed in 2014 and decommissioning has just begun — so i didn't expect to get much closer than this.

the estimated decommissioning cost was US$1.24bn (2014 dollars) however the decommissioning fund contained only $510m at closing.

the NorthStar demolition group recently bought the facility for $1000 & plans to clean it up by 2030 for a much lower cost, pocketing the difference.

#Bloomberg noted recently that the fastest-growing nuclear business is tearing down old U.S. nuclear power stations.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…