| 摘要 | ��
1. Purpose
It is not easy to evaluate the effect of decommissioning cost on the economics of nuclear power. Even in the remarkable growth of nuclear industry, a study on this issue has rarely been carried out. Nuclear power industries came to confront with the financial problem due to soaring construction cost after the middle of 1980s. It was also recognized that decommissioning is different from dismantlement as in fossil-fuel power plants and that depreciation recovery should be made from the initial plants for future decommissioning. Considerable increase in decommissioning cost and limitation of accredited nuclear waste disposal site resulted in a drastic increase in the estimated decommissioning cost. Thereby more accurate estimation of decommissioning cost is required to nuclear industries in many countries with nuclear power plants. Such a situation has no exception even in Korea. Considering limited availability of relevant studies in Korea, the first step may be to raise the question about this issue. This study was motivated with such an idea and based on the purpose of promoting further in-depth study and discussions.
2. Summary
This study intends to look over detailed policies on decommissioning nuclear power of foreign countries. It covers USA, Japan, Russia, China, Canada, European countries as well as Korea, and focuses on the capturing of their recent trends and characteristics. There are three main issues in estimating decommissioning costs. First of all, it is uncertainty of estimated ranges in which estimators have large deviation. Such a variation is mainly due to the scope of estimation rather than its scale. This report introduced previous relevant studies and their results. Secondly, there is a connection between estimation of decommissioning cost and the policy on decommissioning as shown in some studies. This report examined EU policy, its direction and trend in detail. Last of all, it's a level of estimated decommissioning cost. According to the OECD study, the estimated costs of dismantling have big differences from $93 to $909/kw (about ten times), and its average is $320��195/kW depending on countries or plant capacities. Dismantling cost of water reactor(less than $500/kW) is lower than that of gas-cooled reactor (2,500/kW). Main determinants of the economics of nuclear power can be classified into two parts, the part with the nuclear power or others. The former is related to the cost element of the nuclear power generation, the latter is associated with that of fossil-fuel generation. From this viewpoint, an increase in fossil-fuel generation cost contributes to enhancing relative economic competitiveness of nuclear power. The factors affecting the economics of nuclear power can be categorized by the long-term or short/mid-term one. The former concerns changes in capital investment and the latter does changes in variable factors. This context suggests that variable factors can change and affect the economics of nuclear power without changes in cost structure or invested capital. This study compares costs between nuclear power and fossil-fuel generation. It analyzed effects of climbing fossil fuel price and decommissioning cost on the economics of nuclear power for eight countries such as Canada, USA, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovak Republic, Japan, and Korea. The result shows that nuclear power is superior in cost efficiency to fossil-fuel generation in most countries. Climbing fossil fuel price in recent world energy market has contributed to enhancing relative competitiveness of nuclear power. Concerning decommissioning cost other than dismantling cost of nuclear reactor, unfortunately the study should be limited to estimation of the cost range for maintaining comparative cost efficiency of nuclear power because of the limited availability of relevant data and information. In Canada, Czech Republic and Germany, according to the result, nuclear power has higher cost efficiency rather than gas fuel generation when newly considered decommissioning cost is less than 30% of current generation cost. In USA and Japan, nuclear power has higher cost efficiency than gas fuel generation when decommissioning cost is less than 20% and 5% of current generation cost respectively. Also nuclear power is superior to coal fuel generation when decommissioning cost is less than about 10% of current generation cost.
3. Results and Implications
The result shows that dismantling cost for nuclear power plant does not critically affect cost efficiency of nuclear power. Estimated cost for dismantling reactor needs to account for the fact that cost for dismantling reactor is closely related to the level of nuclear power technology, decommissioning policy etc. Dismantling cost for nuclear power plant increases as nuclear safety regulation becomes stricter. However, any international agreement with enforcement is not working yet. This implies that dismantling cost for nuclear power plant may be affected not by international agreement but by domestic policies. On the other hand, fossil fuel price is an exogenous variable since it is determined by international energy market. In addition, progress in development of fossil fuel technology may weaken relative cost efficiency of nuclear power in the sense that cost efficiency of fossil fuel generation may be enhanced. To summarize discussion so far, the most important factors affecting the economics of nuclear power in the future will be domestic policy on nuclear safety, the development of technologies on nuclear safety and fossil fuel. There are some limitations of this study as follows. First, this study could not deal with sufficiently decommissioning cost other than dismantling cost for nuclear power plant and the cost of carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuel combustion in spite of their importance. Second, other nuclear power generation costs (for transmission and distribution, operation and network stability) could not be fully covered in the study. It's not difficult to expect that cost efficiency of nuclear power may be worsened by these costs, but it may need an in-depth study to see more specific result in the future. Third, provisons for decommissioning of nuclear power should be examined within limits. As to this issue, it requires another study on how to manage provisons for decommissioning.
117 pages., 35 refs., 26 figs., 35 tabs. |
