Nuclear capital cost sensitivity analysis

Figure AlO. Nuclear capital cost sensitivity analysis.

Figure A7 illustrates the results of the nuclear fuel price sensitivity analysis. This analysis shows that nuclear is competitive with wind, gas CC, and higher priced technologies, such as solar thermal, solar PV, and geothermal (not shown). There is no nuclear fuel price for which nuclear becomes the low-cost alternative. This result reflects the low total fuel cost for nuclear power relative to capital and O M costs. The break-even nuclear fuel price with gas CC technologies is 0.63 /MBtu. For comparison, the DOE default fuel price assumption...

The base case results, using the DOE data, indicate that in the absence of externality costs, or renewable tax credits, pulverized coal and nuclear are the least cost alternatives at 4.5 and 5.3 cents/kWh, respectively. A complete sensitivity analysis on fuel, capital, capacity factor, and construction time shows that the results for coal and gas are much more sensitive to assumptions about fuel prices than they are to capital costs or construction times, while nuclear results are more sensitive to... 

GenSim s structure makes sensitivity analysis easy. A representative screen (solar PV) is shown in Figure A3. This screen allows the user to compare LCOE costs at either comparable capacity factors (i.e., all at 50%), or at default or user defined capacity factors (i.e., solar PV at 20% with nuclear at 90%). LCOE estimates are displayed at the top of the graph. These estimates change as the user changes key assumptions using either the sliders or number boxes on the bottom half of the screen. For example, changing the assumed capital costs for solar PV from 3868 to 1500 /kW reduces the LCOE from 26.0 to 10.4 cents/kWh. 

The following three sections provide a more detailed sensitivity analysis, derived from GenSim. In the first section, production costs for various technologies are plotted against specific fuel prices. This type of analysis is useful for determining fuel price break-even costs, such as the coal price at which nuclear is cost competitive. The next section determines capital cost break-even points, such as at what capital costs nuclear becomes competitive with coal, gas, or wind. The third section discusses the results of a sensitivity analysis for nuclear plant construction time. All examples use the DOE s data set comparable analysis using the Platt s data set is included in Appendix A.l. 

Figure A6 illustrates a similar analysis for advanced coal technology. This analysis shows that fuel prices of (in /MBtu) 2.18,2.13, and 2.41, respectively, make coal competitive with nuclear, wind, and gas CC technologies. The default DOE coal price in GenSim is 1.29 /MBtu. As with the previous example, these results indicate that coal s competitiveness is very dependent on assumed fuel prices. These results are not very sensitive to changes in capital costs a 10% difference in capital costs changes these results by 0.26 /MBtu.

---