The Advanced Fuel Cycle Economic Analysis of Symbiotic Light-Water Reactor and Fast Burner Reactor Systems, prepared to support the U.S. Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) systems analysis, provides a technologyoriented baseline system cost comparison between the open fuel cycle and closed fuel cycle systems. The intent is to understand their overall cost trends, cost sensitivities, and trade-offs. This analysis also improves the AFCI Program's understanding of the cost drivers that will determine nuclear power's cost competitiveness vis-a-vis other baseload generation systems. The common reactor-related costs consist of capital, operating, and decontamination and decommissioning costs. Fuel cycle costs include front-end (pre-irradiation) and back-end (post-iradiation) costs, as well as costs specifically associated with fuel recycling. This analysis reveals that there are large cost uncertainties associated with all the fuel cycle strategies, and that overall systems (reactor plus fuel cycle) using a closed fuel cycle are about 10% more expensive in terms of electricity generation cost than open cycle systems. The study concludes that further U.S. and joint international-based design studies are needed to reduce the cost uncertainties with respect to fast reactor, fuel separation and fabrication, and waste disposition. The results of this work can help provide insight to the costrelated factors and conditions needed to keep nuclear energy (including closed fuel cycles) economically competitive in the U.S. and worldwide. These results may be updated over time based on new cost information, revised assumptions, and feedback received from additional reviews. iv v
EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe Advanced Fuel Cycle Economic Analysis of Symbiotic Light-Water Reactor and Fast Burner Reactor Systems, prepared in support of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) systems analysis, consists of system cost comparisons between closed fuel cycles and the once-through or "open" fuel cycle. This analysis combines fuel cycle costs with the reactor costs (with associated uncertainties) to produce a total cost of electricity representing the levelized cost of a system strategy consisting of hundreds of reactors and all the supporting fuel cycle services. In these scenarios, the reactors include light-water reactors using uranium oxide (UOX) and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel that are used in combination with advanced recycling reactors (fast reactors). The common reactor-related costs consist of capital, operating, and decontamination and decommissioning costs. Fuel cycle costs include front-end and back-end costs, as well as costs associated with fuel recycling. System cost comparisons are presented in terms of cost distributions and/or ranges rather than single point values. System development costs that include reactor and fuel cycle research, development and demonstration, as well as facility start-up costs are not addressed in this report. Nor does this analysis address site-specific costs or specific business opportunities.The ...
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