Economic Aspects of Atomic Power in the 21st Century – Old Questions, but New Insights

摘要

OverviewThe future role of nuclear power in the energy mix, and in particular policies in this complex sector continue tobe challenging, be it investment policy, competitiveness, incentives for efficient operation and dismantling of plants,and the regulation of the search for long-term storage of nuclear waste. Some of these topics were already discussedin the 20th century, but they are now coming back in the context of the low-carbon energy transformation going on inmany countries of the world.This objective of this paper is to provide a full-fledged review of nuclear power policy issues, in the context ofglobal decarbonisation trends, and to identify options for particularly challenging problems. The paper thuscomplements Davis (2012), who provided an immediate post-Fukushima assessment, but we go beyond his analysison issues such as economic discounting, dismantling, and waste storage.MethodsThe paper relies on microeconomic and political economy analyses, the economics of regulation, riskevaluation, as well as our own numerical modelling of energy scenarios in specific countries, mainly Europe andGermany. Instead of the model-based analysis of one specific question, the paper sketches out the main policy issuesrelated to nuclear power, as seen in the light of recent developments world-wide. Quantitative examples, in-depthcase study assessments, and a full-fledged literature review complement the descriptive analysis.ResultsSeveral decades after the introduction of commercial nuclear power, the industry is still struggling to make acase for it being an “economic” source of electricity. In fact, the gap between the per-uni costs of nuclear and otherenergy sources, e.g. as identified by Davis (2012) has widened over the last years, with the lower natural gas pricesin the U.S., and an increasing share of renewables in some European countries, both driving down prices.Furthermore, also the investment cost increase of nuclear newbuilds identified in the U.S. and France for the period1970-1990s (Rangel and Lévêque, 2012, Grubler, 2010), is continuing, and the specific costs for the new EPR of the3rd generation are also much higher than anticipated. Thus, the dynamics of nuclear power newbuilds have calmeddown in the Western world; an exception to this rule is China and some other emerging countries, with not less than14 reactors currently under preparation in China alone.Clearly there is a contradiction between the low economic competitiveness of nuclear power, and the importantrole it plays in many of the longer-term energy system projections, such as the Reference Scenario by the EuropeanCommission (European Commission, 2013) and the World Energy Outlook (IEA, 2015). A sensitivity analysis ofour dynamic investment model, DynELMOD (Gerbaulet, et al., 2014), for the European level shows that the resultsare highly sensitive to the estimation of capital costs: a value between € 3,000-4,000/kW, usually adopted ininternational comparisons, yields a high share of nuclear power, whereas the historical and recently observed valuesof € 5,000-7,000 yield much lower shares. The same holds for other forecasts and scenarios involving endogenousinvestments. The share of nuclear strongly depends on the underlying cost assumptions. At the same time the modelcomplexity often limits the market aspects that can be covered in investment models. This is particular relevant forshort term effects of renewables and their feedback effect on conventional power plants.A first evaluation of the policy responses, political discussions and connection between different political topicswith nuclear power in different countries shows important differences (Rinscheid, 2015). A particular focus lies alsoon the connection of the nuclear debate to other political topics (namely the renewable debate, climate change,supply security, and industrial policy) and differences between countries on this regard.With respect to decommissioning and dismantling old plants, we observe the emergence of an entire industry,worth several hundreds of billions of U.S.-$, that is rapidly building up. Contrary to the status quo, where each plantis more or less responsible for the dismantling of its own infrastructure, we suggest that competition in the sectorcould be created, by opening up the market for dismantling to public auctions. We observe that in fact approx.. 8-10companies have sufficient technical knowledge, so competition is feasible. In Europe, we observe a graduallyemerging market of incumbents and new entrants, the latter suggesting potential costs reductions of 33% (personalcommunication with industry representatives). The German market, with over 20 plants to be dismantled in thecoming years, is particularly intense. Clearly there are economies of scale, so that national regulatory agencies havetwo options: Maintain the relatively expensive status quo, or bundle the dismantling of several plants and put themup for auctions. We also report about first experience and difficulties of regulatory oversight, linked to informationasymmetries between the regulator and the plants to be decommissioned.Last but not least, a “new”, old issue is currently re-emerging, with the large-scale closure of the atomic powerplants of the 1970/80s: the challenges of securing final, long-term storage of radioactive waste. While this “wickedproblems” (in the parlance of political scientists, see Brunnengraeber et al., 2015, 47-78), had been well known toarrive from the very first day, it has proven to be difficult to find appropriate sites to store the waste, and also tosecure sufficient financial funds for this long-term process. A few projects are currently under way, that mightsucceed in the next decade, such as Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland; yet many countries are struggling to establisha sustainable organization model to finance this activity, lasting at least a century, and requiring safe storage for atleast a million years.ConclusionNuclear power is certainly an important topic in the process of low-carbon energy transformation, but severalcomplex policy questions remain to date, and empirical evidence on some critical issues is still scarce. This paperprovides an update of the survey on nuclear power by Davis (2012), but extends the analysis to “new” issues notintensively covered in the literature, such as recent cost developments, organizing a competitive industry for thedismantling of old power stations, and securing funds for the long-term storage.