DOES THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY REALLY HOPE TO MAKE A PROFIT ON DECOMMISSIONING?

A few years ago, most observers were concerned that atomic reactor de-commissioning funds could not possibly grow fast enough to cover ac-tual decommissioning costs. Huge shortfalls, that likely would have to be made up by taxpayers, were predicted.
The first decommissioning experiences appeared to bear out these fears. Yankee Rowe was a tiny, inexpensive reactor: it cost less than $100 million to build. Actual decommissioning costs, when they finally finish the task: about $450 million. Similar cost escalations occurred, once real-life intervened, at reactors such as Trojan and Maine Yankee.
Today, however, utility executives at companies like AmerGen and Entergy, which are buying up reactors at pennies on the dollar, talk openly of making money by purchasing reactors-even if they never run the reactors! How? By spending less on decommissioning than the man-dated-funds collect.
The AP reported in February 2000 that the Entergy's told its em-ployees that the company is making sound purchases as it buys older reactors. ''You could theoretically shut the plant down and make money on it, because there is more money in the decommissioning fund than it costs to close the plant,'' he said.
How could such a sea-change in attitudes occur in just a few years? Simple. Companies like AmerGen and Entergy and betting on two things: first, and most important, that the NRC will weaken radia-tion standards and allow a utility to declare a site "clean" without fully cleaning it. Second, the utilities are counting on new techniques, such as rubblization (which also depend on weaker radiation standards), to re-duce costs.
The potential result? Companies like AmerGen and Entergy could pocket billions of dollars of ratepayer money, while leaving be-hind a permanent legacy of radioactive contamination.
But there is a simple solution: a new law that states that any funds left over from decommissioning must be refunded to the ratepay-ers who provided the money in the first place. Such a law would reduce the industry's desire to take shortcuts or seek weakened radiation stan-dards, while protecting ratepayers from industry greed. Is anyone in Congress listening?