> The EU ponied up nearly a billion Euros for the decommissioning, which I can't help but notice is almost as much as the new Chernobyl sarcophagus.
It's less than 2/3rds (<1bn vs. 1.56bn) and the new sarcophagus is the (hopefully) last of a series of developments for confinement for a century (ie. there were costs before) while the decommissioning reduces these two reactors to mostly nothing, where the remaining troublesome radioactive material can be long-term stored together with any spent fuel (once there's a proper solution for that which we need, decommissioning or not).
To be sure I played a little fast and loose with "almost as much", but to be fair, 1) the decommissioning is unfinished, overbudget, and behind schedule, and 2) building a containment building around a reactor that hasn't already exploded is sure to be much, much cheaper.
It's less than 2/3rds (<1bn vs. 1.56bn) and the new sarcophagus is the (hopefully) last of a series of developments for confinement for a century (ie. there were costs before) while the decommissioning reduces these two reactors to mostly nothing, where the remaining troublesome radioactive material can be long-term stored together with any spent fuel (once there's a proper solution for that which we need, decommissioning or not).