section_path: Economics
section_name: Economics
paragraph_text: Economics
  
  The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject and multi-billion-dollar investments depend on the choice of energy sources. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant. For this reason, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants. Fuel costs account for about 30 percent of the operating costs, while prices are subject to the market.
  
  The high cost of construction is one of the biggest challenges for nuclear power plants. A new 1,100 MW plant is estimated to cost between US$6 billion to US$9 billion. Nuclear power cost trends show large disparity by nation, design, build rate and the establishment of familiarity in expertise. The only two nations for which data is available that saw cost decreases in the 2000s were India and South Korea.
  
  Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must also take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties. As of 2010, all operating nuclear power plants have been developed by state-owned or regulated electric utility monopolies. Many countries have since liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.
  
  The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from a new nuclear power plant is estimated to be 69 USD/MWh, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. This represents the median cost estimate for an nth-of-a-kind nuclear power plant to be completed in 2025, at a discount rate of 7%. Nuclear power was found to be the least-cost option among dispatchable technologies. Variable renewables can generate cheaper electricity: the median cost of onshore wind power was estimated to be 50 USD/MWh, and utility-scale solar power 56 USD/MWh. At the assumed CO emission cost of 30 USD/ton, power from coal (88 USD/MWh) and gas (71 USD/MWh) is more expensive than low-carbon technologies. Electricity from long-term operation of nuclear power plants by lifetime extension was found to be the least-cost option, at 32 USD/MWh.
  
  Measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power. Extreme weather events, including events made more severe by climate change, are decreasing all energy source reliability including nuclear energy by a small degree, depending on location siting.
  
  New small modular reactors, such as those developed by NuScale Power, are aimed at reducing the investment costs for new construction by making the reactors smaller and modular, so that they can be built in a factory.
  
  Certain designs had considerable early positive economics, such as the CANDU, which realized a much higher capacity factor and reliability when compared to generation II light water reactors up to the 1990s.
  
  Nuclear power plants, though capable of some grid- load following, are typically run as much as possible to keep the cost of the generated electrical energy as low as possible, supplying mostly base-load electricity. Due to the on-line refueling reactor design, PHWRs (of which the CANDU design is a part) continue to hold many world record positions for longest continual electricity generation, often over 800 days. The specific record as of 2019 is held by a PHWR at Kaiga Atomic Power Station, generating electricity continuously for 962 days.
  
  Costs not considered in LCOE calculations include funds for research and development, and disasters (the Fukushima disaster is estimated to cost taxpayers ≈$187 billion). In some cases, Governments were found to force "consumers to pay upfront for potential cost overruns" or subsidize uneconomic nuclear energy or be required to do so. Nuclear operators are liable to pay for the waste management in the European Union. In the U.S., the Congress reportedly decided 40 years ago that the nation, and not private companies, would be responsible for storing radioactive waste with taxpayers paying for the costs. The World Nuclear Waste Report 2019 found that "even in countries in which the polluter-pays-principle is a legal requirement, it is applied incompletely" and notes the case of the German Asse II deep geological disposal facility, where the retrieval of large amounts of waste has to be paid for by taxpayers. Similarly, other forms of energy, including fossil fuels and renewables, have a portion of their costs covered by governments.