Guidelines for producing commercial nuclear power plant decommissioning cost estimates

Decommissioning cost estimates have been made for specific commercial nuclear power plants and for reference plants, utilities, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the US Dept. of Energy, consultants, and others. The different technical, site-specific, and economic assumptions used have made it difficult to interpret these cost estimates during the process of developing rates and rate structures for the recovery of decommissioning expenses. The estimates made to date have not anticipated that form the bases for the variations in cost estimates. The perceived incompatibility among the economic and technical assumptions in these estimates has added to the difficulties regulators have in deciding rates and rate structures for the recovery of decommissioning costs by nuclear utilities. To assist the industry, the National Environmental Studies Project (NESP) of the Atomic Industrial Forum sponsored a study to produce guidelines for developing decommissioning cost estimates. This guideline document was developed by TLG Engineering for NESP under the direction of a task force made up of some of the top experts in the decommissioning field from nuclear utilities, manufacturers, architect/engineering firms, accounting firms, the NRC, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, state regulatory bodies, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and the electric industry research community