Economic and Market Challenges Facing the U.S. Nuclear Commercial Fleet

Szilard, Ronaldo; Sharpe, Phil; Kee, Edward; Davis, Edward P.; Grecheck, Eugene

doi:10.2172/1364498

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Instead, the industry-affiliated Electric Utility Cost Group (EUCG) collates proprietary reactor cost values and releases anonymized national estimates through the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) (Lovins 2022). The NEI estimates have been broadly adopted as reference benchmarks to assess the profitability of U.S. NPPs (see Szilard et al 2016;Monitoring Analytics 2019;Potomac Economics 2021;Monitoring Analytics 2022). Accordingly, annual fuel and operations and management costs (O&M) referred to as operating costs were obtained from several NEI reports (see Appendix A).…”

Section: Timeframementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, I provide several policy suggestions for reconfiguring the support schemes to negate an excess profit scenario and to reflect dynamic market conditions. This paper is related to multiple strands in the literature, in particular, the economic challenges facing nuclear plants in competitive markets (Joskow 2006;Lovins 2013;CRS 2016;Szilard et al 2016) and the ongoing debate on retaining or phasing out nuclear plants (Lovins 2017;Richards and Cole 2017;Cebulla and Jacobson 2018). Along these lines, a limited collection of papers have investigated the economic viability of nuclear power plants in the U.S. Roth and Jaramillo (2017) for example, estimated the break-even price of electricity nuclear plants would need to cover their long-term costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors demonstrated that nuclear plants relying solely on market revenues and simultaneously operating in a low natural gas price environment would require an additional uplift revenue of approximately $8 to $44/MWh to break-even. Similarly, Szilard et al (2016) provided a comprehensive profitability assessment for 79 operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. The authors found that in a low market price environment, NPPs face systemic financial challenges in deregulated markets, resulting in a revenue gap estimate of $5 to $15 per MWh.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

State and federal nuclear support schemes in dynamic electricity market conditions: Insights from NYISO and PJM

Bah

2023

Energy Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Timeframementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

State and federal nuclear support schemes in dynamic electricity market conditions: Insights from NYISO and PJM

Bah

2023

Energy Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…As natural gas prices continue to decline, large-scale nuclear plants will not be able to compete with natural gas turbines in most regions of the country. Several large-scale nuclear plants, particularly those that operate in deregulated markets, are facing economic challenges that will result in early-plant closures (prior to plant license expiration) (Szilard et al 2017). Since 2013, six U.S. nuclear power plants have closed, and utilities have announced plans to close nine more reactors within the next ten years.…”

Section: Current Fleet (Lwrs)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Energy Systems: 2020 Roadmap

Bragg‐Sitton

Rabiti

O’Brien

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many cities, states, utilities, and public commissions are setting energy standards that aim to reduce carbon emissions. In order to realize a clean and resilient energy future, new methods of energy production, distribution, and use will be required. Renewable energy technologies are currently being deployed in significant numbers around the world in response to the desire to reduce emissions, coupled with decreasing costs for these technologies. However, despite this growth, data reported in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Future of Nuclear report that was released in May 2019 indicate that the fraction of clean energy contributions to electricity generation has not changed over the last 20 years. This unexpected trend results from the increasing penetration of variable sources driving nuclear energy out of the market in some regions, resulting in the shutdown of some large-scale, non-emitting plants when non-emitting renewable resources are added to the grid. The advent of historically low-cost renewable generation sources, alongside low cost and high availability of natural gas, has driven down the price of electricity, decreasing the minimum baseload generation required to meet load at certain times of the day or year. These factors serve to diminish the role of traditionally baseload nuclear generation. Many nuclear plants have responded to increasing volatility in net demand by operating flexibly, reducing power output to reduce the financial impact to the plant from very low or negative market prices. This practice preserves the contribution of nuclear energy to grid stability and reduces economic losses associated with negatively-priced electricity sales, but it does not reduce the plant operating costs. Nuclear energy is a proven low-emission option that can provide consistent, dispatchable power to meet electricity demands while also providing high quality heat that can meet energy demands beyond the electricity sector-energy system design should seek to maximize these assets. This roadmap defines proposed integrated nuclear-renewable energy systems and identifies key technology gaps to realizing deployment of commercial scale systems for the production of a variety of electric and non-electric products. Integrated energy systems (IES) under consideration could incorporate multiple energy generation resources and energy use paths, with a focus on low-emission technologies such as nuclear and renewable generators. Together these technologies provide affordable, reliable, and resilient energy while simultaneously reducing environmental emission of CO2 and greenhouse gases (GHGs). IES are cooperatively-controlled systems that dynamically apportion thermal and/or electrical energy to provide responsive generation to the power grid. They are composed of multiple subsystems, which may or may not be geographically co-located, including a thermal energy generation source (e.g., nuclear), a turbine that converts thermal energy to electricity, additional electricity generation source(s) (e.g., renewable ge...

show abstract

“…These nuclear integrated energy systems (IES) could provide economic benefits to nuclear power plants (NPPs). Competing with cheap fossil resources and declining renewable energy costs has left NPPs at an economic disadvantage [4]. Hydrogen production allows NPPs to diversify their revenue streams and has potential to increase NPP profitability [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Dispatch Model of Nuclear High-Temperature Reactor with Hydrogen Cogeneration in Electricity Market

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hydrogen produced without carbon emissions could be a useful fuel as nations look to decarbonize their electricity, transport, and industry sectors. Using the iodine–sulfur (IS) cycle coupled with a nuclear heat source is one method for producing hydrogen without the use of fossil fuels. An economic dispatch model was developed for a nuclear-driven IS system to determine hydrogen sale prices that would make such a system profitable. The system studied is the HTTR-GT/H2, a design for power and hydrogen cogeneration at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor. This study focuses on the development of the economic model and the role that input data plays in the final calculated values. Using a historical price duration curve shows that the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) or breakeven sale price of hydrogen would need to be 98.1 JPY/m3 or greater. Synthetic time histories were also used and found the LCOH to be 67.5 JPY/m3. The price duration input was found to have a significant effect on the LCOH. As such, great care should be used in these economic dispatch analyses to select reasonable input assumptions.

show abstract

Economic and Market Challenges Facing the U.S. Nuclear Commercial Fleet

Abstract: Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES) caesenergy.org Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) gain.inl.gov Idaho National Laboratory (INL) www.inl.gov

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

State and federal nuclear support schemes in dynamic electricity market conditions: Insights from NYISO and PJM

State and federal nuclear support schemes in dynamic electricity market conditions: Insights from NYISO and PJM

Integrated Energy Systems: 2020 Roadmap

Economic Dispatch Model of Nuclear High-Temperature Reactor with Hydrogen Cogeneration in Electricity Market

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About