Nuclear Power as a System Good: Organizational Models for Production along the Value-Added Chain

Abstract

Due to its technical complexity, the co-production of electricity generation and nuclear weapons, and its high fixed costs, nuclear power is a particularly complex commodity, which poses unusual challenges for state economic (or industrial, defense, innovation etc.) policy. As in other sectors, the question arises here, too, of an adequate division of private and public responsibilities, in other words "competition and planning", taking into account knowledge aspects, incentive structures, transaction costs and a fair distribution of revenues and burdens. The nuclear sector requires an upstream system of a knowledge base, institutional and physical infrastructure (sites, transport, waste storage, etc.) and legal and institutional infrastructure. In this paper we apply the "system good analysis" developed by Beckers et al. (2012) and Gizzi (2016) to the nuclear power sector and identify ideal-typical organizational models for the value-added stages of the so-called nuclear front-end (mining, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication), constructing nuclear power plants, decommissioning and long-term storage as well as the respective interfaces between these stages. The main purpose of this overview paper is to assign tasks, rights and duties to organizations ("stakeholders") at the various stages of the value chain and to define the interface problems. We use an institutional economics approach, which focusses on the provisioning decisions and production between public authorities and private actors. In addition to a general overview, we focus on the back-end of the nuclear energy value chain, the decommissioning of facilities and the short-and long-term disposal of radioactive waste.

Nuclear Power in the Twenty-first Century (Part II) - The Economic Value of Plutonium

“…In this paper, we reconsider economic issues related to plutonium, and present insights from ongoing research by the author and the research group, amongst others on the economics of nuclear power (Wealer and Hirschhausen 2020;Wealer et al 2021), and on the technical developments in the context of the Generation IV developments, including SMR-reactors ("small modular reactors") under development (Pistner et al 2021). We take the environmental dangers and security issues (proliferation) as given and only explore the resource and energy economic aspects, comparing them with non-light water-cooled nuclear power.…”

“…The other weapon-grade fuel developed was highly enriched uranium (HEU), which was used in the Hiroshima bombing, August 6, 1945. 4 For a general system analysis of the nuclear industry see(Rothwell 2016;Wealer and Hirschhausen 2020).…”