EU Commission calls for transparency in nuclear decommissioning
The European Commission on Wednesday published a report on the use of financial resources allocated for the decommissioning of nuclear plants.
Of the 155 nuclear plants currently in operation in the European Union (25 member states), 50-60 will have to be shut down by 2025, it said. Consequently, the Commission considered it “essential” to guarantee that sufficient funds were available to meet the costs of decommissioning, while maintaining a high level of safety.
However, the Commission reiterated that the achievement of an internal market for electricity implied that resources were managed in a fully transparent system and were used entirely for the purposes for which they had been created.
The Commission estimates that decommissioning costs for nuclear reactors are equivalent to 10-15% of their initial investment cost. However, it stressed that whatever form decommissioning resources took, it would be difficult in practice to draw the line between which operations were deemed necessary to achieve a normal management of the resources, and those practices that could result in distortions
of competition in the single market.
The Commission collated information from 14 member states possessing nuclear reactors as the basis for its report. The feedback varied strongly with regard to strategies for decommissioning and the methods for managing the financial resources, it said. However, it appeared that the majority of member states had retained a method of external management that was separate from the accounts of the nuclear plant operator, which the Commission believed offered the greatest transparance and the best guarantees of the final use of financial resources. However, the Commission noted that this was not the case in all the countries.
The Commission asked member states to submit more information, which would enable it to define in the first instance a common framework, and in the long run the harmonisation of methods for financing decommissioning within the EU. ADS
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