Chapter 11 - Generic Approaches to Estimating U.S. Decommissioning Costs

The estimation of decommissioning costs has certain common features, regardless of country or state. In the U.S., the NRC has taken this into account as they worked on the development of generic estimates. The author of this chapter, Richard Smith, has been at the center of this effort for more than a decade. In this chapter, he summarizes three principal methods that have been used in cost estimates in lite U.S.: the linear extrapolation approach, the unit cost factor approach, and the detailed engineering approach which he helped to develop at Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Washington state.