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SCP-155 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-155
Expected annual
$4.4M
One-time setup
$58.3M
Annual recurring
$4.2M
Personnel
7
Initial containment and equipment acquisition are dominated by chamber construction and a contingency remediation reserve, producing large one-time costs; ongoing yearly operations (staff, security, maintenance, and compliance) drive recurring expenses.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $58.3M
Catastrophic Remediation Reserve $50.0M
[#24] Reserve estimate for site remediation, demolition, long-term remediation and relocation in worst-case catastrophic containment failure.
Facilities $4.0M
[#1] Construction of radiation-shielded, heat-resistant reinforced concrete containment chamber with lead/steel lining, airlock, vibration isolation and access controls.
Equipment $2.5M
[#2,#3,#4,#5,#7,#8,#12,#15,#16,#23,#29] Remote-operation hardware and manipulators; HVAC/active cooling hardware; radiation monitoring hardware; initial decontamination hardware stock; one-time licensing-related purchases; per-relocation packaging/transport preparations; cybersecurity/hardened server hardware; backup power hardware; initial thermal/radiation-resistant materials; initial sacrificial chamber module purchase; firmware/firmware-level containment/watchdog integration.
Contingency Reserve Fund $1.0M
[#19] Upfront contingency reserve allocation to seed an emergency fund for extraordinary containment incidents and claims.
Decommissioning And Dismantling $500K
[#26] One-time cost for safe dismantling/disposal of components (including RTG handling) and controlled decommissioning.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $300K
[#13,#14] Static-analysis and simulation development, software/tools and initial research lab/tooling to support pre-execution analysis and sandboxing.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $4.2M/yr
Staff Wages $750K/yr
[#9] Salaries for senior researchers, engineers/technicians, radiation safety officer, and admin/database support (2 Level-3 researchers; 3 engineers/technicians; 1 RSO; 1 admin).
Research And Monitoring $680K/yr
[#4,#12,#13,#14,#22,#27,#29] Ongoing sensor calibration & replacement, cybersecurity audits and maintenance for secure systems, experiment-approval labor overhead, static-analysis tooling maintenance, data-archiving and reproducibility budgets, opportunity-cost/tooling to safely capture computations, containment software testing.
Security And Mtf $500K/yr
[#10] Full-time armed perimeter security, training and readiness posture; excludes per-incident MTF surge costs which are episodic.
Specialist Response Team $300K/yr
[#11] Hazmat/radiological decon teams, medics, and readiness training/equipment stockpiles.
Insurance And Indemnity $300K/yr
[#19] Property/third-party coverage and indemnities; Foundation may self-insure portions but budgeted baseline cost included.
Archiving And Research Budget $200K/yr
[#22] Data/log storage, reproducibility archiving and limited research grants for controlled use of SCP-155.
Opportunity Cost Mitigation $150K/yr
[#27] Tooling and expert time for checkpointing, pause/resume, and analysis to capture useful computations while preventing dangerous runs.
Cybersecurity Maintenance $125K/yr
[#12] Maintenance for hardened air-gapped servers, audits, intrusion detection and secure-storage upkeep.
Facilities Maintenance $120K/yr
[#1,#3,#15,#30,#16] Structural and chamber upkeep, utilities for containment systems, routine testing of interlocks and backup power, and general site hardening/maintenance.
Cover Story And Legal $100K/yr
[#20] Legal retainers, cover-story maintenance, liaison/PR and per-incident legal costs averaged into annual retainer.
Per Event Decontamination Fund $100K/yr
[#5] Annualized reserve to cover occasional decontamination events (variable per-event cost; used to smooth budgets).
Experiment Approval Overhead $100K/yr
[#13] Labor overhead for code review, pre-flight checks, and non-halting analysis.
Miscellaneous Site Costs $100K/yr
[#30] Incremental utilities, communications, site broadband/security links, badges and minor physical-security upgrades.
Training And Certification $80K/yr
[#21] Ongoing training, drills, certifications for research staff and security.
Remote Ops Maintenance $60K/yr
[#2] Maintenance, parts replacement and service contracts for robotic manipulators, remote consoles and camera arrays.
Licensing And Compliance $60K/yr
[#7] Ongoing licensing, inspections, regulatory compliance and permit renewals for RTG and radiological operations.
Static Analysis Maintenance $60K/yr
[#14] Ongoing maintenance for static-analysis tooling and simulation sandboxes.
Specialized Materials Replacement $60K/yr
[#16] Replacement shielding plates, sacrificial lining tiles, heat-sink modules and custom cabling after wear or contamination.
Medical Surveillance $50K/yr
[#17] Routine employee health monitoring, bioassays, dosimetry management and health-tracking programs.
Sacrificial Module Replacement $50K/yr
[#23] Recurring replacement and disposal costs for modular inner chambers if used.
Public Safety Planning $50K/yr
[#28] Planning and preparedness for public-safety responses, air/water monitoring exercises and community screening coordination.
Logistics And Transport $40K/yr
[#8,#25] Routine transport and storage insurance and small recurring logistics costs; per-relocation transport is handled as a modular one-time cost when it occurs.
Supplies And Consumables $30K/yr
[#5,#18] Routine PPE, decon consumables, filters, replacement dosimeters and small consumables.
Hvac And Cooling Maintenance $30K/yr
[#3] Operation energy and routine maintenance for chillers, pumps, piping and emergency heat-dump systems.
Sensor Calibration And Replacement $30K/yr
[#4] Calibration, replacement and consumables for radiation and environmental sensors and dosimetry.
Ppe And Consumables $30K/yr
[#18] Annual procurement of hazmat suits, filters, respirators and replacement decon consumables.
Transport And Storage Insurance $30K/yr
[#25] Insurance and premiums covering transport, storage and operation of high-value hardware.
Radioactive Waste Disposal Per Event $20K/yr
[#6] Baseline annual average for low-to-moderate waste packaging and transport; large disposals are incident-driven.
Backup Power Maintenance $15K/yr
[#15] Testing and minor maintenance for backup power systems and independent monitoring power.
Containment Software Testing $15K/yr
[#29] Regular testing of watchdogs, firmware-level auto-termination and tamper-proof interlocks.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $4.2M/yr
84.8% probability / year
Normal year with routine operations, training and occasional small consumable replacements; no major decontamination or relocation events.
routine_operations scheduled_maintenance
🚨 Minor Incident $3.6M/yr
12.0% probability / year +$-620000 vs baseline
Small containment incident or run requiring a localized decontamination event and modest waste disposal and MTF/response activity.
run_exceeding_threshold_but_limited localized_contamination single_decon_event
🚨 Major Breach $7.4M/yr
3.0% probability / year +$3.1M vs baseline
Execution exceeds safe runtime significantly, causing chamber damage, large-scale decontamination, waste disposal and partial site repair/relocation costs.
run_exceeding_6_minutes_substantially structural_damage_and_heavy_contamination
🚨 Catastrophic Failure $53.4M/yr
0.2% probability / year +$49.1M vs baseline
Catastrophic non-halting event (similar in scale to Incident 155-08) causing structural destruction, mass contamination, casualties, evacuation and long-term remediation/demolition.
unrecoverable_non-halting_execution RTG_release_or_major_structural_failure
👥 Personnel 7 total
Role Count Notes
Research Scientist / Senior Researcher 2 [#9] Two Level-3 Senior Researchers required to authorize runs and lead experiments.
Engineer / Maintenance / Technician 3 [#9] On-call engineers and technicians for operation, repairs, and remote-handling tasks.
Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) 1 [#7,#17] Licensed radiological officer responsible for compliance and dosimetry oversight.
Administrative Staff / Database 1 [#9,#12] Administrative and database support for experiment scheduling, record-keeping and secure file server management.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide detailed line-item ranges for most hardware, staffing and operational elements enabling medium-confidence estimates; tail risks (catastrophic remediation, RTG disposal frequencies) remain highly uncertain, so overall confidence is not high.
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