Page 30 - Beyond Decommissioning

Introduction 11

redevelopment strategy is chosen. This delay causes undue care and surveillance
expenses, deterioration, growing loss of interest and of momentum, and the resulting
loss of resources—which can be permanent. If site reuse is delayed, say, for 20 years,
the land upon which the plant sits will likely have a lower value than it would have had
if the reuse had occurred with no such delay. In other words, there is an opportunity
cost reflected in the reduction in the present value of the land. The economic or market
value of any land reflects the stream of future profits, income, or noneconomic asset
leverage “income” that the land can generate. (Note: vacant land generates no such
income during this 20-year delay.) Financial details in this regard are provided in
Williams et al. (2005).
In redevelopment terms, the nuclear industry is not different from other industries.
As this book shows at length, the nuclear buildings and sites are not generally different
in size, layout, and main constructional features from their nonnuclear equivalents.
Actually many nuclear buildings are very similar to nonnuclear ones because their
functions are the same (e.g., turbine buildings). Nuclear sites exist in both developed
and developing countries, and house a wide range of nuclear and/or radiological facil-
ities such as nuclear power reactors; research reactors; small medical, research and
industrial facilities; isotope production facilities; nuclear fuel cycle facilities; and
waste processing and storage installations. Multi-facility sites include nuclear power
stations (with two, four, or more reactors), nuclear research centers (with research
reactors, hot cells, laboratories, waste treatment and decontamination stations,
2
etc.), medical centers, etc. Their size can span from a fraction of km to many
2
km . Nuclear buildings can be small (e.g., a radiobiology laboratory or a teletherapy
department) or huge and massive (e.g., a power reactor building, a cooling tower).
While a power reactor building has unique features, a lot of auxiliary buildings at
nuclear sites are not very different from industrial warehouses, silos, bunkers, and
the like (Figs. 1.8 and 1.9). Some nuclear buildings are uncontaminated, because they
never handle radioactive substances; others have been contaminated by nuclear oper-
ations and must be decontaminated to make reuse possible. While some nuclear build-
ings look extraordinary and impressive to the non-initiated, others look simple and
understandable to anybody.
The readers could raise a basic objection regarding the application of nonnuclear
redevelopment experience to nuclear sites: these are often marked and haunted by an
“a priori” (somebody could say, irrational) stigma, the “gut feeling” being that radi-
ation is still looming even after decommissioning has been completed and the site offi-
cially cleared for unrestricted use. Obviously nonnuclear sites do not have this specific
stigma, but they could be associated with other, equally significant, stigmas: one of
these is the perceived persistence of hazardous substances, but a subtler stigma is
described in Stadler (undated) and while referring to Austria, it could well refer to
other countries. “… The successful era of industrial monument preservation in the
1920s and 1930s was rudely interrupted by the events and effects of the war …
The devastating effects of the Second World War led to a lasting and ultimately
decade-long interruption to industrial monument preservation in Austria … the term
‘industry’ was tainted with the stigma of annihilation. Industry being associated with
the war economy, the production of ‘important war materials’ using slave labor and