Dismantling of nuclear power plants at optimal NPV

Abstract

Today, worldwide far more than 100 nuclear power plants, which have been decommissioned in the recent years, are waiting for their complete dismantling. Since the dismantling of a single reactor causes costs of up to one billion Euros and lasts up to 15 years, the elaboration of a scheduling approach helping to optimize the net present value of a dismantling project seems to be worthwhile. In this paper we present a resource-constrained project scheduling approach optimizing the total discounted disbursements of dismantling a nuclear power plant. For the corresponding NP-hard optimization problem, we introduce an appropriate project scheduling model with minimum and maximum time lags, renewable and cumulative resources as well as multiple execution modes. To solve this model, we introduce a relaxation-based enumeration approach that delivers optimal solutions for problem instances containing up to 50 activities.

Nuclear decommissioning after the German Nuclear Phase-Out an integrated view on new regulations and nuclear logistics

“…Hawickhorst (1997) and Hwang et al (2003) setup optimization tools for the management of radioactive waste from the operation of nuclear power plants. The high demand for future dismantling of NPPs is addressed by Bartels et al (2011), where the NPV of a dismantling project is optimized by using a resource-constrained project scheduling approach. In a reverse logistics approach that considers both the nuclear power generation and the corresponding induced waste reverse logistics, Sheu (2008) addresses the effcient and cost-minizing organization of nuclear waste disposal during operation, while taking into account operational risks.…”