Are you ready for that great atomic power?

Escalating cost estimates, stagnant asset growth and declining contributions have driven the aggregate funding deficit of U.S. nuclear decommissioning trusts to a near $30 billion deficit as of Dec. 31, 2015, according to data collected by Callan Associates. The study, published in July, looked at 27 public utilities and 27 investor-owned utilities.

The chief driver of costs has been re-evaluations of site-specific cost estimates, primarily in the investor-owned piece of the dataset. The median plan return among the investor-owed funds in 2015 was -2.4%, compared to the 1.4% return of the S&P 500 index and the -4.8% decline of the S&P 500 Utilities index. Overall contributions of $362 million were down $7 million in 2015 despite a $1.6 million increase from the public utilities.

Data collected by P&I lists Exelon Corp., Duke Energy, and Entergy Corp. as the top investor-owned funds with assets of $10.5 billion, $5.5 billion and $5.4 billion, respectively.

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