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Callan’s 2025 Nuclear Decommissioning Funding Study found that NDT balances totaled $100 billion in 2024. Assets rose over 23% from two years earlier, largely due to stock performance, which saw the S&P 500 up 58% in cumulative terms for the two-year period. Those gains helped funding as a percentage of total decommissioning cost estimates, which rose to almost 100% in 2024, the highest level since this study started in 2007 and a significant increase over the 82.5% level in 2022.
Our study, which offers key insights into the status of nuclear decommissioning trusts (NDTs) in the U.S. to make peer comparisons more accurate and relevant, covers 24 investor-owned and 27 public power utilities with an ownership interest in the 94 operating and 14 of the non-operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. NDTs are created to pay for the costs of decommissioning a closed nuclear power plant, which involves safely removing it from service and reducing residual radioactivity to a level that permits release of the property and termination of the operating license.
Our NDT study also found that total decommissioning costs were up slightly in 2024 to just over $100 billion, a $2.2 billion (+2.3%) increase from 2022, as several updated cost figures more than offset ongoing decommissioning at non-operating reactors. Total contributions from utilities into their NDTs fell to $163 million in 2024, a $208 million (56%) decrease from $371 million in 2022.
Other key findings from our NDT study:
- Assets as a percentage of costs hit record levels for both investor-owned (103.7%) and public power utilities (76.4%) in 2024.
- Site-specific cost estimates totaled over $65 billion versus $33 billion under the NRC minimum formula in 2024, a difference of $32 billion.
- The median escalation rate (used in forecasting future decommissioning expenditures given current dollar cost estimates) for all plants was 2.89% with an average of 3.32%.
- All 17 investor-owned utility NDTs for which data was available are invested in equity and all but one in fixed income securities with median allocations of 64% equity and 35% fixed income. Three of the utilities reported allocations to real estate, private equity, and/or hedge funds. Two-thirds of the owners reported a cash equivalent/other allocation of 1%.
- While all 17 investor-owned utility NDTs were invested in equity, only 8 of the 14 public power utility NDTs reported having an equity investment. The median allocation of those with an equity investment was 61%. All 14 public power utility NDTs are invested in fixed income with a median allocation of 53%. None of the utilities reported an allocation to real estate, private equity, and/or hedge funds.
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