Decommissioning planning, costing/funding, characterisation, safety assessment and waste management planning are the key mutually related issues in preparation of decommissioning.

Purpose of decommissioning costing is to prepare qualified data for planning of decommissioning projects to be realised:

• Safely - with minimal planned and future impact on personnel, public and environment; planning data should ensure that enough finances will be available to ensure the safety of decommissioning
• Economically - according to the cost optimised decommissioning option; it is recommended to evaluate set of possible option covering all realistic approaches and to select the optimal one
• In due time - according to the optimised schedule of decommissioning (Work Breakdown Structure - WBS); the schedule should be optimised according to the selected decommissioning techniques, waste management system and related resources
• Publicly acceptable - agreed by all involved parties; acceptance by all stakeholders is facilitated by using the harmonised cost structure with known content of elementary cost elements.

Reliable cost estimating is one of the most important elements of decommissioning planning. Through the history of cost estimates, many cost methodologies were developed and the results may differ due to different work scope, labour costs, structure of presented data, etc. The major issue is to understand and explain the differences. This is the main reason for development and introduction of the ISDC. Experience accumulated shows that a reasonable degree of reliability and accuracy can be achieved by developing the cost estimates bases on a case-by case national / site / project specific basis.

When selecting a decommissioning strategy, in most cases several alternative options are evaluated. The decommissioning costs should be known already in early stages before starting decommissioning and in the case of new nuclear facilities at the commissioning stage. Other parameters such as manpower, exposure, waste quantities, etc. support the informative content of results of decommissioning costing; especially the manpower supports the proper understanding of labour cost items. Harmonised presentation of costs and other project management data is recommended for facilitating the understanding the meaning of cost elements and for facilitating the benchmarking; this is the role of ISDC.

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