The cost will be covered by the $900 million that Exelon accumulated in a decommissioning fund.
But what if the culture militated towards a decommissioning of poets' special (sacrificial) status.
If that is the case, Zapatero's chief political advisers say, why give the group any political credibility by engaging with it now, even to organize its official disbandment and a decommissioning of weapons?
Even now, at the start of a decommissioning operation that is expected to last 40 years, the plant faces a shortage of workers qualified to manage the dangerous work that lies ahead.
Just as Norway has treated its oil money not as profit but as provision against a tougher future, so the governments in whose territories oil companies work should force them to pay into a decommissioning fund.
Senator George Mitchell guided the political talks towards the Good Friday agreement, General John de Chastelain, in direct contact with the IRA and other armed groups, worked out a decommissioning process that eventually resulted in arms being put beyond use.
Later this month the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), will begin removing more than 1,500 fuel assemblies from the pool, the first step in a decommissioning process expected to last at least three decades.
For all his talent as "a conduit, a valve", in one official's words, he will find it hard to resolve the dilemma that he helped to sidestep three years ago.During the recent talks, Messrs Blair and Ahern pushed the Ulster Unionist Party to accept Sinn Fein ministers, on a suggestion that a decommissioning process would begin within days.
While workers at the plant struggle to contain thousands of tonnes of radioactive water and begin a decommissioning operation expected to last decades, the government earlier this month lifted evacuation orders in three locations just outside the 12-mile no-go zone.
The hope is that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could use laser profiling to map the inside of the chambers and make work easier for experts who are trying to make them safe as part of a decommissioning and cleaning process.
