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That is only right if we completely ignore the cost of the final disposal and such. As always in this calculations they forget to add the cost for the 15.7 billion years of nuclear waste maintenance. If we talk about the cost for the normal consumers (tax payers) this must be included. Don't you think? But if we do the profit talk, you're totally right. What a fantastic business model this is, isn't it?

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After a few years the fuel is cool enough to passively cool. At that point you just bury it underground.

The facility (Onkalo) does not need any maintenance once it has been filled up and closed as you just fill the whole thing making access to it very very hard as it is 520m under ground so a couple kilometers of tunnel to dig through to get to it. (clay sediment at the bottom where the vessels are and concrete for the pathway up)

As I said the 3.5 billion is the projected total lifetime costs of the permanent storage site Onkalo. So that is the total cost (to the best of our ability to estimate for it)

Nuclear waste doesn’t last 15.7 billion years. It’s radioactive for hundreds to thousands of years. I expect this is why the waste site would cost $3.5B to store forever. Waste isn’t terribly heavy or large so the storage is largely fixed to dispose of many, many reactors.

And there’s a bit of unused space in Finland :)

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