Assessment of strategy robustness under disruption of objective in dynamic fuel cycle studies

Abstract

The future of nuclear power depends on the interests and decisions. To take the relevant deep uncertainty into account, a new methodology of robustness analysis of fuel cycle strategies has been developed. The method has been applied to the French cycle, considering the future deployment of fast reactor as the preselected objective and an uncertain change, called disruption, towards a new objective: the minimization of transuranic inventories without fast reactor. The status of plutonium is contradictory in two cases. Two approaches of identifying robust strategies were tested, which correspond respectively to the static and adaptive robustness assessment. One identifies static strategies in a pre-disruption scenario, which achieve acceptable outcomes for both objectives. The other takes a trajectory pursuing the pre-selected objective and, in case of disruption, adapts it for the new objective. The comparison of two approaches indicates the temporality of adaptation relative to immediate actions under the uncertain disruption.

Impact of disruption between options of plutonium multi-recycling in PWRs and in SFRs

“…In this work, the methodology of robustness assessment for nuclear fleet transition strategies under the uncertain disruption of objectives, developed in [18], is applied to the assessment of two important strategies inspired from French national strategies: the plutonium multi-recycling in PWRs, and that in SFRs. In this work we defined the robustness of a given strategy as its capacity to be adapted 14 to the possible future changes of objectives, reflecting the deep evolution of the nuclear context.…”

“…A methodology for the robustness assessment of strategies in electro-nuclear scenario studies has been developed in the previous study of [18]. In this methodology, the disruption, which stands for an abrupt change without clear description of probability, is used as the approach to integrate the uncertainties of objective for the nuclear future.…”

“…The scenario study in [18] investigates the global sensitivity of parameters in a large exploratory space based on statistical approach, only focusing on one single output metric for each objective. In this work, the optimization approach is employed for adaptation scenarios in order to focus on a small number of adaptive strategies.…”