Costs of running a nuclear power plant and the measures to reduce the costs

• Main Author: Shen, Xuhuai.
• Other Authors: Tseng King Jet
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45971
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Nuclear power plant has become a hot topic again in recent years due to the awareness of the global warming by greenhouse gas emission. The cost of running a nuclear power plant is significantly important to the investors. There are various key factors are discussed in this report. In particular, capital cost which take 60% of the total costs are calculated by adding over night cost, financial costs and other variations. Since capital costs occupy such a large proportion, it is a better area to be considered for cost reducing. For example, the period of construction must be kept as short as possible and financing secured at reasonable costs of capital. The next component will be fuel costs. It is about 20% of the total costs including the waste management. As the technologies improve, the efficiency of the reactors is increased rapidly. This helps to reduce the fuel costs because less fuel is needed to generate the same amount of the electricity. The third component is the operation and management. It is the area where a bit difficult to reduce the costs because it is a labour-intensive portion. As higher educated and more experienced workers are needed, the labour costs will be increased and continue to be increasing. Also more training is demanded when new technologies are involved. However, since it is only about 20% of the total costs, it is not very sensitive in a macro-view and can be over countered by the reduction from the other 80% mentioned above. With the development of the generation III and IV reactors, new nuclear power plants should now be regarded as good, conservative long-term investment prospects. Once the initial significant capital cost burden for the very first units of a series is overcome, they can offer electricity at predictable low and stable costs for up to 60 years of the operating life. Investment in nuclear should therefore be attractive to industrial companies who require significant base-load amount of low cost power for their operations in the long run with almost zero greenhouse gas emissions.