Nuclear reactors’ construction costs: The role of lead-time, standardization and technological progress

摘要

This paper provides the first comparative analysis of nuclear reactorconstruction costs in France and the United States. Studying the cost ofnuclear power has often been a challenge, owing to the lack of reliabledata sources and heterogeneity between countries, as well as the long timehorizon which requires controlling for input prices and structural changes.We build a simultaneous system of equations for overnight costs andconstruction time (lead-time) to control for endogeneity, using expecteddemand variation as an instrument. We argue that benefits fromnuclear reactor program standardization can arise through short termcoordination gains, when the diversity of nuclear reactors’ technologiesunder construction is low, or through long term benefits from learningspillovers from past reactor construction experience, if those spilloversare limited to similar reactors. We find that overnight construction costsbenefit directly from learning spillovers but that these spillovers are onlysignificant for nuclear models built by the same Architect-Engineer (AE).In addition, we show that the standardization of nuclear reactorsunder construction has an indirect and positive effect on constructioncosts through a reduction in lead-time, the latter being one of the maindrivers of construction costs. Conversely, we also explore the possibility oflearning by searching and find that, contrary to other energy technologies,innovation leads to construction costs increases.