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Comment by atwrk | Hacker News Reader

Have a look at this nuclear plant in Northern Germany that is in the process of being decomissioned since 1995. It's still not finished, suspected end date is now in the 2040s and is now projected to cost about 10B €. For a single plant.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_Greifswald (you have to translate that page yourself, the English version doesn't contain the relevant information)

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Surely that's not because the people in power - the same people who have pushed trhough the decommissioning of these still functioning power plants - are want them to be expensive to decomission because it suits their agenda. Decomissioning costs can always be however high you want them to be but that doesn't mean that they have to be. Worst case you can just encase the whole thing in concrete until radiation levels naturally drop.

Did you honestly just invent a conspiracy about some unnamed people with a hidden agenda of making nuclear look expensive by paying 10B euros for decommissioning a working plant?

Just a suggestion, but alternatively you could also accept that in reality, decomissioning actually is expensive.

It’s not really that much of a stretch to think this is exactly what is going on.

One state in Australia, Victoria, recently disappeared $15 billion of public funds to criminal organisations under the guise of funding a big infrastructure project.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. No one knows how much money disappeared, it could be up to $30 billion.

Labor-Green governments do this everywhere.

It’s entirely reasonable to suspect something similar is going on in Germany around their nuclear decommissioning.

> Labor-Green governments do this everywhere

I suppose your name ("rightnutwingjob") gives it away but "Did you know crooks exist" isn't actually a proof that grand conspiracies are true.

Yes, a lot of that is just waiting for the active parts to get less 'hot' though. But yes it's incredibly expensive and it's only going to get more so as we start caring more about pollution and proliferation.

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