Techno-Economic Analysis Methods for Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

This paper focuses on critically reviewing the prevailing techno-economic analysis methods used for traditional and new nuclear power plants (NPPs). The organizations whose methods are compared here are – International Atomic Energy Agency; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Chicago, U.S. Department of Energy / Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and International Energy Agency – Nuclear Energy Agency. We identify technology and market factors that changed in the past few years that have a direct impact on the economic feasibility of nuclear power. Based on the review, we identify areas in which the traditional methods could be improved to better fit the changed global scenario, so as to give a more realistic picture of the feasibility of NPPs. We found that there are many similarities across organizations in terms of methodology. The differences were mainly regarding the terminology and the levels of aggregation. We identified a costing method which combines the salient features of other methods to better fit the changed global scenario, so as to give a more realistic picture of the feasibility of NPPs.