Cost Calculations at Early Stages of Nuclear Research Facilities in the Nordic Countries Available to Purchase

The Nordic countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and to some extent also Finland, had very large nuclear research and development programs for a few decades starting in the nineteen fifties. Today, only some of the facilities are in use. Some have been decommissioned and dismantled while others are at various stages of planning for shutdown. The perspective ranges from imminent to several decades. It eventually became realized that considerable planning for the future decommissioning is warranted and that an integral part of this planning is financial, including how financial funds should be acquired, used and allocated over time. This necessitates that accurate and reliable cost estimates be obtained at all stages. However, this is associated with fundamental difficulties and treacherous complexities, especially for the early ones. Eventually, Denmark and Norway decided not to build any nuclear power plants while Finland and Sweden did. This is reflected in the financing where the latter countries have established systems with special funds in which money is being collected now to cover the future costs for the decommissioning of the research facilities. Nonetheless, the needs for planning for the decommissioning of nuclear research facilities are very similar. However, they differ considerably from those of nuclear power reactors, especially with regard to cost calculations. It has become apparent in the course of work that summation types of cost estimation methodologies give rise to large systematic errors if applied at early stages, in which case comparison based assessments are less biased and may be more reliable. Therefore, in order to achieve the required quality of the cost calculations, it is necessary that data and experience from authentic cases be utilized in models for cost calculations. It also implies that this calculation process should include a well adopted learning process. Thus, a Nordic co-operation has been established for the exchange and evaluation of cost-related information on nuclear research facilities. The aim is to identify good practices, accumulate experience, compile data from actual plants and projects, and to derive methodology for cost calculations, especially for early stages. The work includes the following tasks which constitutes the bulk of the present paper: • identification of good practice with regard to the following: - strategy and planning, - methodology selection, - radiological surveying, - uncertainty analysis; • descriptions of relevant plants, features and projects: - decommissioning of reactor DR 1 in Denmark, - decommissioning of reactor R 1 in Sweden, - decommissioning of the pilot scale uranium fuel reprocessing plant in Norway, - planning for the future decommissioning of the TRIGA reactor in Finland; • techniques for assessments of costs introduction.