Economics of Nuclear Facilities

Garant předmětu:

Lecturer:

Tutor:

Supervisor:

Department of Nuclear Reactors

Synopsis:

The course focuses on the economic evaluation of nuclear power plants, including assessment of the impact of the lifetime of nuclear installations. The first lectures are focused on the introduction to economics and further on the basic course of microeconomics. The lectures continue with an overview of the business economics, explanations of the concepts of revenues, costs etc. and their application in the evaluation of the sources of energy. The second half of the lectures are focused on the economic aspects of the fuel cycle, construction and operation of power plants and also their decommissioning. In conclusion, the students will get acquainted with the basic methods of economic evaluation of investments.

Requirements:

Syllabus of lectures:

1. Introduction: basic concepts of economy, difference between economics and economy, Introduction to microeconomics and macroeconomics.

2. Microeconomics: Elements of the Market, Supply and Demand, Balance of the Economy. Average, fixed, variable and marginal costs and revenues, consumer behaviour, theory of the firm, price formation, perfect and imperfect competition, examples of imperfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, price and price regulation.

3. Introduction to the corporate economy: property and capital structure of the company, revenues, costs and profit of the company, profit and relations between the basic economic values of the company, analysis of the turning point, operational and financial leverage.

4. Economics of electricity production: supply and demand for electricity, typical annual and daily consumption diagram, fixed, variable costs of individual power sources, construction of the supply function of electric energy and its shifts, examples according to the selected market of electric power, Capacity factors of different sources.

5. Externalities in power generation: the concept of externality, negative and positive externalities, externalities in power generation, externalities of nuclear facilities, comparisons between sources.

6. Economics of nuclear energy sources: capital, operational and fuel costs of nuclear power plants and their comparison with other sources, fuel cycle of nuclear power plants and its evaluation – mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, fabrication, evaluation of fuel reprocessing and permanent storage, calculation of LCOE.

7. Economy of decommissioning of nuclear power plants: costs of decommissioning, Securing financial reserves for decommissioning. Comparison of approaches in different countries.

8. Economic evaluation of investments: marketing analyses, WACC - corporate discount rates, static and dynamic methods of evaluation - PBP, NPT, IRR.

9. Theory of innovation: innovation processes, application of research into practice, Schumpeter economic waves, innovation impulses, innovation lifecycle.

Syllabus of tutorials:

Study Objective:

Study materials:

Key References:

1. G. Rothwell: Economics of Nuclear Power, 1st Ed., Routledge, 2016 ISBN 987-1-138-85840-4

2. W. D. Nordhaus, P. A. Samuelson: Economics, 19th Ed., McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010 ISBN 978-0-07-351129-0

Recommended References:

3. S. Stoft: Power System Economics: Designing Markets for Electricity, 1st Ed., Wiley-IEEE Press, 2002 ISBN 0-471-15040-1

4. D. S. Kirschen, G. Strbac: Fundamentals of Power System Economics, 1st Ed., Chichester England, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2004 ISBN 0-470-84572-4

Note:

Further information:

No time-table has been prepared for this course

The course is a part of the following study plans:

• Jaderné inženýrství - Jaderné reaktory (elective course)
• Vyřazování jaderných zařízení z provozu (compulsory course in the program)