Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

4.9 COST OF PREDISPOSAL OPERATIONS
4.101
Costs for treating, storing, and transporting spent fuel or commercial reprocessing and
mixed oxide fuel fabrication wastes are presented in this section. All costs are stated in
terms of constant(a) 1978 dollars.
The costs shown here are levelized(b) unit costs based on capital, operating, and
decommissioning costs for the individual predisposal waste management operations. Capital,
operating, and decommissioning cost estimates have been developed as part of this Statement
for the predisposal facilities associated with the example geologic disposal system and are
summarized in Appendix A. Predisposal costs for alternatives other than geologic disposal
are based on predisposal costs of the geologic disposal system where the operations are
similar. Where the operations are different, data from other studies have been used to the
extent available.
For the once-through cycle, the mined geologic and very deep hole concepts have the
lowest predisposal systems costs ($103/kg HM) of the alternatives studied in this State-
ment. Costs of other alternatives are 50 to 100% higher. For the reprocessing cycle, the
mined geologic, very deep hole, well injection, space injection, and rock melting alterna-
tives all cost about $170/kg (including spent fuel storage and transportation). Costs of
other alternatives ranged from $15 to over $230/kg HM more than the lowest cost options.
The cost tables in this section are intended to provide predisposal cost comparisons
between disposal alternatives and to illustrate cost relationships among predisposal compo-
nents for the example geologic disposal alternative. The total costs presented here do not
include the significant costs of research and development. Costs for the entire waste man-
agement system, levelized with respect to the power generation that produced the waste, are
developed in Chapter 7.
A brief explanation of the cost estimate assumptions and bases for the costs developed
in this Statement is given in Section 3.2. Additional detail on predisposal facility costs
for geologic disposal is available in DOE/ET-0028, Volumes 2, 3 and 4.
4.9.1 Once-Through Fuel Cycle Predisposal Costs
For the example once-through cycle, predisposal operations consist of storage at reac-
tor basins, storage in independent basins when reactor basin capacities are exceeded, treat-
ment and packaging of the fuel assemblies, and all transportation operations. A brief
description of the operations required for each disposal option is found in Table 4.1.1.
Table 4.9.1 lists the costs associated with these predisposal operations for the alter-
native disposal methods studied. Reactor basin storage charges of $25/kg HM and transporta-
tion costs of $26/kg HM for shipment of spent fuel to treatment facilities are common to all
(a) For a definition of constant dollar costs, see Section 3.2.8.1.
(b) Levelizing refers to developing a single, constant unit charge, which recovers all
expenditures associated with a facility or system including interest (see Section
3.2.8.2). The costs stated in this section are levelized with respect to individual
waste management operations only.