When a power company decides to close a nuclear power plant permanently, the facility must be decommissioned by safely removing it from service and reducing residual radioactivity to a level that permits release of the property and termination of the operating license.
Why do nuclear plants have to be decommissioned?
At the end of the life of any power plant, it needs to be decommissioned, cleaned up and demolished so that the site is made available for other uses. For nuclear plants, the term decommissioning includes all clean-up of radioactivity and progressive dismantling of the plant.
Can you shutdown a nuclear plant?
During the power operation of a nuclear power plant, a self-sustaining chain reaction occurs in the reactor core. … To shut down a nuclear power plant, the reactor must be brought into a permanently uncritical state (subcriticality) and the heat that continuous to generate must be discharged safely.
What would happen if a nuclear power plant was left unattended?
And it seems that it is wide consensus, that should the nuclear power plants remain unattended for longer period of time, they will simply overheat and cause major damage to their surroundings. Also, the nuclear power plants have several backup power on and off-site to provide emergency power to help cool down.
Is Chernobyl reactor 4 still burning?
The accident destroyed reactor 4, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and causing numerous other deaths in weeks and months that followed. … By 06:35 on 26 April, all fires at the power plant had been extinguished, apart from the fire inside reactor 4, which continued to burn for many days.
Why is decommissioning a nuclear power station expensive?
One of the major costs is the safe disposal of highly radioactive material, which will not decay sufficiently as to become safe, for hundreds of thousands of years, most of which is held in temporary storage at the Sellafield reprocessing facility in Cumbria.
Will we run out of uranium?
According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today’s consumption rate in total. … Breeder reactors could match today’s nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies.
Is uranium cheaper than coal?
Uranium has the advantage of being a highly concentrated source of energy which is easily and cheaply transportable. The quantities needed are very much less than for coal or oil. One kilogram of natural uranium will yield about 20,000 times as much energy as the same amount of coal.