Economic Risk Analysis Of NPP

ECONOMIC RISK ANALYSIS OF NPP

Suparman, Elok S. Amitayani
Pusat Pengembangan Energi Nuklir (PPEN), BATAN
Jl. Kuningan Barat, Mampang Prapatan, Jakarta Selatan, 12710
ABSTRACT
ECONOMIC RISK ANALYSIS OF NPP. Along with technology risks, economic risks are major consideration in a country’s nuclear power plant (NPP) program, due to its large investment cost if compared to conventional plants. At least there are two kinds of economic risks to pay attention to. Firstly, the costs escalation and the delay of construction work and secondly, the low capacity factor and the short lifetime. The parameter under consideration in this paper is the generation cost, measured in US$/kWh. Generation cost by definition is all the costs spent during the plant life time, takes into account the fixed and variable costs. Those economic risks mentioned above give a direct impact to the plant generation cost as they will be a burden to owner’s balance of payment. The parameters to be tested in this paper will be construction time, capacity factor, and plant lifetime. The risk of costs escalation will not be discussed further. The calculation results from IAEA’s DEEP program show that there is a relation between the three parameters and the generation cost. The delay of construction time will add up the generation cost, the high capacity factor will lower the generation cost, while the long lifetime of the plant will give an interesting cheaper generation cost unless the plant is extended over its economic lifetime. A comprehensive understanding on NPP economic risks will be a helpful tool for the decision makers.

Keywords: economic risks, NPP, generation cost
Published : Proceeding "SEMINAR NASIONAL PENGEMBANGAN ENERGI NUKLIR II 2009", Jakarta, 25 Juni 2009.