A decision analysis of the commercial demonstration fast reactor

Abstract

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has expressed the view that Britain should shortly commence construction of a Commercial Demonstration Fast Reactor (CDFR) to come into operation around the year 2000. We analyse whether such a decision, to build a CDFR now, is economically optimal. A linear programme of the electricity supply system of the CEGB is used to calculate the improvement in total discounted system costs until 2040 arising from the decision. Uncertainty is incorporated through employing subjective probability distributions for the description of the key inputs. Partial rank correlation coefficients measure the sensitivity of the solution to uncertainty in each of the inputs.