A senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has revealed that the bill for cleaning up Britain’s ageing nuclear reactor sites could soar above the current estimate of £73bn – which was itself revised upwards in January by the National Audit Office, from an original figure of £12bn.
“Back in the fifties, nobody had a clue how to close down these atomic installations,” said Dr Jim Strangelove. “But they just said, ‘Hey, not our problem!’ and went right ahead and built the damned things anyway. Their strategy for the safe disposal of radioactive waste was to dig a few ruddy great ponds and bung the lot in. We haven’t the faintest idea of how much there is, nor what to do with it when we haul it out. We even asked veteran German futureheads Kraftwerk to tell the radioactivity to stop, but sadly it just went right on emitting particles.”
When asked how much the final clean-up bill might be, Dr Strangelove smiled and said, “It’ll probably end up costing the Earth.”
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