탈탄소 에너지 시스템에서 원자력의 경제학 (Economics of nuclear power in decarbonized energy systems)
[Economics of nuclear power in decarbonized energy systems]는 화석 연료 가격 상승으로 인한 위기 상황에서 원자력 발전에 대한 논쟁을 다루고 있습니다.
In the current energy crisis, surging prices for fossil fuels add to the debate on alternatives to gas, coal, and oil for energy generation. In addition to ongoing and planned efforts to expand renewable energy sources, many governments have recently declared or emphasized their intention to invest in new nuclear power plants: Japan is considering to invest in new reactors for the first time since the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, France recently pledged to construct up to 14 new plants, although specifics remain unclear, and the United Kingdom announced funding for a Sizewell C station to pursue their target of 24 GW nuclear capacity by 2050 (Financial Times, 2022; New York Times, 2022; Bloomberg, 2022). Currently surging prices for fossil fuels only encourage existing plans for nuclear power that pre-date the crisis and originate from government strategies to mitigate carbon emissions and combat climate change (Goldstein et al., 2019). One the one hand, from a technical perspective, nuclear power offers two advantages: First, nuclear plants are dispatchable. While today’s plants do not operate flexibly and thus provide baseload supply, research suggests new reactor concepts or even established light-water reactors are capable of flexible operation (Jenkins et al., 2018; Lynch et al., 2022; MIT, 2018). As a result, nuclear power could complement fluctuating supply from renewables and ensure security of supply in decarbonized energy systems. Second, nuclear offers a great energy potential. Compared to renewables, nuclear power is far less constrained by land availability or meteorological conditions (Ritchie, 2022). At the same time, decarbonization in heating, industry, and transport requires electricity as a primary source of energy, either directly or indirectly using synthetic fuels produced from electricity (Luderer et al., 2022; Bogdanov et al., 2021). Therefore, nuclear power could substantially contribute to fulfilling the increasing demand for electricity. On the other hand, there are economic arguments against investing into nuclear power. New plants are capitalintensive; especially since actual construction cost and time frequently exceed forecasts (Lovins, 2022; Rothwell, 2022). For instance, in France, offical construction costs of Flamanville 3 so far quadrupled to 12,600 €/kW while project completion is currently delayed by more than a decade (EDF, 2022; Rothwell, 2022). Similarly, costs of Olkiluoto 3 in Finland tripled over a construction time of 17 years (Deutsche Welle, 2022). Costs of Hinkley Point C in the United Kingdom have doubled to date, and the reactor is currently scheduled to start operation in 2027—11 years after construction started (BBC, 2022). Whether this trend is reversible, is subject to debate: Drawing on the historic expansion of pressurized water reactors in France, Berthélemy and Escobar Rangel (2015) suggest reinforced investments and standardization could lower construction costs and time. Grubler (2010) however states that the expansion of pressurized water reactors never achieved positive learning effects in the first place. With the high costs of nuclear power, other technologies might be more efficient to achieve decarbonization. Instead of potentially flexible nuclear plants, imports from other regions, batteries, or seasonal storage using synthetic fuels can cover demand when supply from wind and photovoltaic (PV) is low. In addition, electrification in heating, industry, and transport adds a substantial share of flexible demand. For example, electricity consumption of electrolyzers can adjust to wind and solar generation, thereby supporting the integration of renewables (Wang et al., 2018). In the same way, flexible electric heating or charging of electric vehicles can adapt to renewable supply (Schill and Zerrahn, 2020; Schuller et al., 2015). Beyond flexibility, high investment costs can render nuclear power more expensive even compared to renewables in unfavorable sites, like offshore wind turbines in deep waters or PV in locations with little sunshine (McKenna et al., 2014). Against this background, we investigate the economic efficiency of nuclear power in two steps: First, we review projected and actual costs of new nuclear capacity to compute the conceivable range of levelized costs of energy (LCOE), discuss plausibility and compare the outcome to renewables. Second, we compute the efficient share of nuclear power for previously obtained cost ranges in a decarbonized energy system with a comprehensive energy planning model (Göke, 2021). Due to its extensive scope, the model can consider all alternatives to nuclear power for the provision of flexibility, most importantly cross-border exchange of energy, flexible demand, and storage technologies. Previous research limited the scope to single regions omitting the exchange of energy as a source of flexibility, neglected the demand-side flexibility induced by electrification, or only featured short-term storage systems (Duan et al., 2022; Baik et al., 2021). The cost review focuses on OECD countries due to discrepancy of nuclear development between OECD and non-OECD countries observed in Rothwell (2022); the techno-economic analysis covers the European continent. Inevitable simplifications of the techno-economic model are made in a way that favors investment in nuclear power. Therefore, the computed share of nuclear power in the energy mix is not an accurate estimate, but rather an upper bound of what might be if significant nuclear cost reductions were to be achieved. This applies in particular because our techno-economic analysis omits external social costs of nuclear power associated with the risk of accidents, waste management, and proliferation (Lévêque, 2014; Lordan-Perret et al., 2021; Wheatley et al., 2016; Lehtveer and Hedenus, 2015). Although their robust quantification is difficult, external costs for nuclear typically exceed estimates for renewable energies (Stirling, 1997). The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: The next section 2 describes the methodology to compute LCOEs and introduces the applied energy planning model. Section 3 presents the results for LCOE analysis and the planning model. In Section 4 these results are discussed and Section 5 concludes.
국내외 전문자료
2023-08-31
국내외 전문자료탈탄소 에너지 시스템에서 원자력의 경제학 (Economics of nuclear power in decarbonized energy systems)
- 국가스위스
- 발행기관ETHZ (취리히대학교)
- 원본링크https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.14515
- 첨부파일
- 파일이 없습니다.