Decommissioning of commercial nuclear power plants: Insights from a multiple-case study

The decommissioning of nuclear power plants is a complex and lengthy process. But so far, of the 204 already closed reactors, only eleven with more than 100 MW of electrical capacity have been fully decommissioned, while another 200 reactors are expected to reach the end of their operational lifetime in the next two decades. Against this backdrop, this comparative cross-country case study investigates the existing structure of the decommissioning of commercial nuclear power plants in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. The investigation is structured along five themes: 1) ownership of nuclear power plants, 2) regulation, 3) financing and liability, 4) production of nuclear decommissioning and 5) nuclear waste management. Based on thirteen factors across these themes, knowledge gaps related to the role of the government in nuclear decommissioning (i.e. the interlinkage between nuclear power plants ownership and nuclear decommissioning, the influence of the regulatory framework on nuclear decommissioning performance, and the regulation of waste management), the challenges associated to financing decommissioning (i.e. cost estimations, fund adequacy, financing liabilities, and external market influences), and the developments in the emerging decommissioning markets (i.e. the question whether to rely on market or internal decommissioning provision, the role of emerging specialized firms, and bottlenecks along the supply chain) are identified as central topics for further research to derive best practices for the commercial decommissioning industry.