Japanese Radiation

[Anomalocaris]

What's the cost of making a new nuclear power plant compared to the cost of "unmaking" one(destroy it or shutting it down permanently)?

It cost approximately $1 billion to deal with the physical cost of decommissioning the nuclear pile and completely removing a 1 GW nuclear power plant. That does not consider the cost of replacing the lost generating capacity if the nuclear plant decommissioned prior to the end of its useful life. No new nuclear power generation reactor has been installed in the US for over 20 years, so the following is an estimate. Building a new 1 GW nuclear generating unit on a completely new site cost approximately $3 billion. Expanding existing nuclear power plants with new reactors cost less.

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What's the cost of making a new nuclear power plant compared to the cost of "unmaking" one(destroy it or shutting it down permanently)?

I've heard one option is to bury it in concrete. How viable is that as a solution?

You can't bury an entire nuclear power plant in concrete. But significantly radioactive parts like components of the reactor pressure vessel are removed from the site and buried in concrete. A nuclear power plant that never had any very severe accidents can be totally dismantalled and turned into a park.

There is as yet no way to dispose of the much more dangerous once through spent fuel rods. A intelligent solution would be to reprocess it for reuse as fuel in other reactors until the spent fuel losses much of its potency. But anti-nuclear hysteria prevents this economical and much safer means of disposing nuclear waste.