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Autonomous low-capacity nuclear power plants are best suited as reliable sources of power in remote regions which are difficult to reach. This article presents a complete study of the cost-effectiveness of low-capacity nuclear power plants and possible ways to increase it. The economic acceptability of an almost two-fold increase of the run time of KLT-40S and ABV-6 reactors by switching to UO 2 with a larger load is analyzed. The possible organizational and economic mechanisms for implementing low-capacity nuclear-power designs are determined. At the present time, the optimal organizational form for implementing low-capacity nuclear power projects is a public-private partnership. The financial and economic instruments which work effectively within the framework of state-private partnership and which take account of the specific nature of nuclear technology are licensing and the constructiontransfer-operation arrangement.The main drawbacks of nuclear power today are an open fuel cycle and, as a consequence of this, the production of enormous quantities of radioactive wastes, nuclear power plants whose efficiency, reliability, and safety are inadequate, and the need for autonomous energy production in remote regions with a difficult climate, a situation which is especially acute in our country. A practical solution of the second problem and a step toward a partial solution of the first one is to introduce autonomous low-capacity nuclear power plants (ALCNPs) into the energy system. According to the IAEA classification, ALCNPs are energy sources with equivalent electric power less than 300 MW(e) [1]. Such a power level makes ALCNPs suitable for solving not only social but also large-scale economic-industrial energy-supply problems.The main drawbacks of ALCNPs are the relatively high specific capital investment as compared with high-capacity nuclear power plants (50000-150,000 rubles/kW), as a result of which there are those who believe that ALCNPs are not cost-effective, regardless of the exceptional qualities of long-term autonomy and the much lower decommissioning costs.Cost-Effectiveness of ALCNPs. Using the specially developed computer program NTC [2], we shall complete a technical-economic assessment of various designs for low-capacity nuclear power production by modeling the cost-effectiveness of the two currently best developed ALCNP designs, specifically, ALCNPs with KLT-40S, which has successfully completed the preliminary stages and has received permission for adoption, and ALCNPs with ABV-6. The calculations were performed for two types of cores: variant A -the initially proposed core and variant B -a modified core.

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