storage vaults, shipping containers and specially designed
trucks for nuclear shipments—estimates of costs cannot now be
made. Even rough cost estimates must await the development of
designs specifying the technical characteristics of various
components to be included within the safeguards system. However, it
is likely that some costs attributable to safeguards may be offset,
at least partly, by benefits from increased efficiency of
operations in the nuclear industry. For example, more accurate
accounting may produce savings in nuclear fuel costs. Moreover, the
co-location of nuclear fuel cycle facilities would greatly reduce
the risk that a nuclear shipment between two facilities might be
hijacked and also result in substantial savings in transportation
costs to the enterprise involved.
ALLOCATION OF SAFEGUARDS COSTS
Who should
bear the costs of safeguards against nuclear theft? Whether these
costs are passed on in the form of higher taxes or higher electric
power rates, there can be no doubt that the burden of paying for
safeguards will be distributed very widely among the American
people. It should be noted, however, that the economic impact of
distributing safeguards costs through the tax structure could be
quite different from the impact of distributing the costs through
the electricity rate structures of the various utilities which use
nuclear power.
Identifiable
safeguards costs will, of course, constitute a much greater
proportion of total capital and operating costs in some phases of
the nuclear fuel cycle than in others. Moreover, the safeguards
costs of the same step in the fuel cycle and also the total costs
will depend on the reactor type involved. For example, safeguards
costs of transporting LWR fuel assemblies without plutonium recycle
will be less than for plutonium bearing LWR fuel assemblies.
Safeguards
costs should be passed, along with other costs, from one step to
another in the nuclear fuel cycle, ultimately being reflected in
the cost of nuclear electric power. There are, however, temporary
difficulties in passing these costs along. A few nuclear
enterprises, such as nuclear fuel reprocessing companies, have
drawn up long-term contracts with utilities. The agreed prices in
some of these contracts do not specifically provide for cost
escalations attributable to compliance with increasingly stringent
safeguard requirements for nuclear materials. In such cases, added
costs due to safeguards may have to come out of potential profits,
or even make it impossible to avoid operating at a loss.