Nuclear Power Construction Research Articles

Exploring expert confidence in cost estimates for nuclear power engineering, procurement and construction projects - a survey of nuclear industry experts

Nuclear power is currently undergoing a renaissance because of increasing energy demand and the ability of nuclear power to provide low-emissions, base-load power supply. However, the industry has been historically plagued with considerable technology deployment risks, with project cost and schedule overruns presenting a significant risk to nuclear plant investors. Considerable uncertainties exist with new nuclear power deployment, and there is a lack of a standardised industry approach to characterising, assessing and acting on these uncertainties to limit the variability on eventual project performance. This study identifies the major causes of risks in nuclear power plant deployment projects, and the role of project risk-management, as defined as the framework for creating awareness, assessment and action on risk. The study is performed through both a literature review of nuclear power plant project risk documentation, interviews with subject matter experts and a survey of a cross section of nuclear industry experts.

UK Electricity Market Reform—revolution or much ado about nothing?

The UK Government has published a White paper on Electricity Market Reform, which precedes legislation with a declared aim of delivering secure, clean and decarbonised electricity supply. It introduces interventionist methods aiming to promote a nuclear power construction programme, a streamlined renewables programmes and a system to ensure that generation capacity is built to cope with variability in electricity output. However, the policies announced to date are likely to fail in delivering the promised nuclear programme and the system of ‘feed-in tariffs’ announced for renewables is stunted and made less efficient by a desire to integrate it with the prevailing electricity market arrangements. The effect of the changes in the White Paper is likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary.

Development of a new chemical process-industry accident database to assist in past accident analysis

Past accident analysis (PAA) is one of the most potent and oft-used exercises for gaining insights into the reasons why accidents occur in chemical process industry (CPI) and the damage they cause. PAA provides invaluable ‘wisdom of hindsight’ with which strategies to prevent accidents or cushion the impact of inevitable accidents can be developed. A number of databases maintain record of past accidents in CPI. The most comprehensive of the existing databases include Major Hazard Incident Data Service (MHIDAS), Major Accident Reporting System (MARS), and Failure and Accidents Technical Information Systems (FACTS). But each of these databases have some limitations. For example MHIDAS can be accessed only after paying a substantial fee. Moreover, as detailed in the paper, it is not infallible and has some inaccuracies. Other databases, besides having similar problems, are seldom confined to accidents in chemical process industries but also cover accidents from other domains such as nuclear power plants, construction industry, and natural disasters. This makes them difficult to use for PAA relating to CPI. Operational injuries not related to loss of containment, are also often included. Moreover, the detailing of events doesn’t follow a consistent pattern or classification; a good deal of relevant information is either missing or is misclassified. The present work is an attempt to develop a comprehensive open-source database to assist PAA. To this end, information on about 8000 accidents, available in different open-source clearing houses has been brought into a new database named by us PUPAD (Pondicherry University Process-industry Accident Database). Multiple and overlapping accident records have been carefully eliminated and a search engine has been developed for retrieval of the records on the basis of appropriate classification. PUPAD doesn’t aim to replace or substitute the well established databases such as MHIDAS and MARS but, rather, aims to compliment them.

The research of energy sustainable development strategy in China-Based on the analysis of multi-objective decision

Abstract Currently, major countries in the world are scheduling or revising their energy strategies, showing the tendency of regionalization and internationalization. The concern of energy strategy of China is transforming from the supplydemand balance of the energy system to the coordination among energy, economy and environment, which involves a series of issues including technology, cost, finance, environmental, etc. The multi-objective decision model, used in this paper, optimizes the energy structure of china in the next ten years, and a conclusion is made after analyzing the optimized results: By 2020, coal-dominated energy structure of China will convert to coal and oil-based energy, and primary power will play an essential role as an alternative energy. It means that in the future, the development of energy in China must rely on technological innovation, improving energy efficiency, accelerating hydropower, nuclear power construction, simultaneously taking a high degree of emphasis on the development and utilization new energy and renewable energy.

Prospects for nuclear energy in Canada, the USA and Mexico

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the possibility of building new nuclear power plants in Canada and the USA. Electricity generating companies, especially in the south-eastern USA and Ontario, announced plans during 2005 and 2006 which could lay the groundwork for future decisions to construct commercial reactors that could come on line as early as 2015. The possibility of new nuclear power construction is also being examined in Mexico. This growing interest is driven by less expensive technologies, concerns regarding the environmental impacts of generation using fossil fuels and more favourable attitudes toward nuclear power from national and regional governments.

Heteroskedastic inefficiency in a cost frontier model: An application to nuclear power plant construction costs

This paper adapts the use of a stochastic cost frontier by allowing for heteroskedasticity in the inefficiency error term. Results from nuclear power construction costs indicate that a heteroskedastic inefficiency cost frontier model is preferable to ordinary least squares estimates and a homoskedastic cost inefficiency model. In fact the homoskedastic model is unable to detect the presence of cost inefficiency. We find that the variance of the cost inefficiency increased over time and perhaps decreased with the experience of the architects and engineers on the project.

Required Removal Rates for Kr-85 in the Future

Krypton-85 is a radioactive noble gas with a long half-life, and its release to the environment results in global contamination. The concentration of 85Kr in the atmosphere is gradually increasing today, and it will reach the order of 104 pCi/m3 by the year 2000 if this nuclide is continued to be released without removal. The release will likely be restricted in the future under international control, though the dose rates due to 85Kr absorption based on the ICRP recommendation is at present being reevaluated on account of its appearing to be excessively high. In this paper, the removal rates required for 85Kr are estimated to cover several decades, using the linear programming method, with a selection of given constraints specifying different criteria for limiting atmospheric pollution, and based on an assumed program for nuclear electricity power generation and construction of reprocessing plants. Some parameters contained in the objective function are difficult to fix, particularly the equipment and op...