WNA Report: Nuclear Provides Lowest-Cost Generation

The World Nuclear Association has released a new report, "The New Economics of Nuclear Power," that finds nuclear to be the lowest-cost electricity-generating technology.

The WNA report finds that the increased competitiveness of nuclear power is the result of cost reductions in all aspects of nuclear economics: construction, financing, operations, and waste management and decommissioning. Among the cost-lowering factors are the evolution to standardized reactor designs, shorter construction periods, new financing techniques, more efficient generating technologies, higher rates of reactor utilization (i.e. increased capacity factors), and longer plant lifetimes. Higher capacity factors, it bears emphasis, have been found to be consistent with enhanced safety performance, as both are indicators of strong operational management.

Here's what the WNA's director general had to say:

“At this stage in the nuclear renaissance, this is the most definitive analysis of the costs of building and operating nuclear power plants in the 21st century,” said John Ritch, the WNA’s Director General. “Nuclear power has attained widespread recognition for its benefits in fossil pollution abatement, near-zero greenhouse gas emissions, price stability and security of energy supply. The impressive new development is that these virtues are now a cost-free bonus, because nuclear energy has become the world’s least expensive way to generate electricity.”

“Nuclear energy’s pre-eminence economically and environmentally has two implications for government policy,” said Ritch. “First, governments should ensure that nuclear licensing and safety oversight are not only rigorous but also efficient in facilitating timely deployment of advanced power reactors. Second, governments should be bold in incentivizing the transformation to clean-energy economies, recognizing that such short-term stimulus will, in the case of nuclear power, simply accelerate desirable changes that now have their own long-term momentum.”

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