> Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuc... stated LCOE "associated with the long-term operation of a nuclear power plant generally falls in the range US$ 30-40 per MWh, for typical refurbishment costs for Light Water Reactors and a lifetime extension of 20 years".
That is not the issue. Let me give you a example. Belgium decided to extend the life on several nuclear reactors, that originally had plans for decommissioning.
So they started to do actual deep maintenance for the extended life. Then they ran into issues of cracks in the concrete, issues with cracks in metal storage tanks, and a whole lot of other issues.
Reactors down for a long periode for the repairs, AND a ton of extra costs. These costs of those repairs, i can not find them no matter where i look. Its interesting how hidden those are.
For the 2025 extension, the initial estimated 1.5 billion for the life extension. And still the whole issue about the reactors issues their full fix cost price is unknown. In other words, they did a patch job and for the next extension, they need to do a major maintenance / repair.
The extension of the German reactors was estimated at 3B+ if i remember correctly. And that does not include if any issues are found.
That is the problem... This type of deferred maintenance start to stack up over time, when you have a phase out time for reactors. So issues becomes a big black money hole when you already committed to the extension.
They had > 95.4% unit capability factor in 2022 per https://pris.iaea.org/pris/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsUnitCapab... . It doesn't sound like they were being run into the ground, rather things were operating very efficiently.
> Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuc... stated LCOE "associated with the long-term operation of a nuclear power plant generally falls in the range US$ 30-40 per MWh, for typical refurbishment costs for Light Water Reactors and a lifetime extension of 20 years".