IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/687.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Cost of Nuclear Electricity: France after Fukushima

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas Boccard

Abstract

The Fukushima disaster has lead the French government to release novel cost information relative to its nuclear electricity program allowing us to compute a levelized cost. We identify a modest escalation of capital cost and a larger than expected operational cost. Under the best scenario, the cost of French nuclear power over the last four decades is 59 d/MWh (at 2010 prices) while in the worst case it is 83 d/MWh. On the basis of these findings, we estimate the future cost of nuclear power in France to be at least 76 d/MWh and possibly 117 d/MWh. A comparison with the US confirms that French nuclear electricity nevertheless remains cheaper. Comparisons with coal, natural gas and wind power are carried out to the advantage of these.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Boccard, 2013. "The Cost of Nuclear Electricity: France after Fukushima," CEPR Discussion Papers 687, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
  • Handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP687.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harris, Grant & Heptonstall, Phil & Gross, Robert & Handley, David, 2013. "Cost estimates for nuclear power in the UK," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 431-442.
    2. Lina Escobar Rangel & François Lévêque, 2012. "Revisiting the cost escalation curse of nuclear power: New lessons from the French experience," Working Papers hal-00780566, HAL.
    3. McNerney, James & Doyne Farmer, J. & Trancik, Jessika E., 2011. "Historical costs of coal-fired electricity and implications for the future," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3042-3054, June.
    4. Koomey, Jonathan & Hultman, Nathan E., 2007. "A reactor-level analysis of busbar costs for US nuclear plants, 1970-2005," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5630-5642, November.
    5. Boccard, Nicolas, 2009. "Capacity factor of wind power realized values vs. estimates," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2679-2688, July.
    6. Lionel Stoleru, 1969. "Taux d'intérêt et taux d'actualisation," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 5(1), pages 3-11.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lovering, Jessica R. & Yip, Arthur & Nordhaus, Ted, 2016. "Historical construction costs of global nuclear power reactors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 371-382.
    2. Schmeda-Lopez, Diego & McConnaughy, Thomas B. & McFarland, Eric W., 2018. "Radiation enhanced chemical production: Improving the value proposition of nuclear power," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 491-504.
    3. Linares, Pedro & Conchado, Adela, 2013. "The economics of new nuclear power plants in liberalized electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 119-125.
    4. Farmer, J. Doyne & Lafond, François, 2016. "How predictable is technological progress?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 647-665.
    5. Matsuo, Yuhji & Nei, Hisanori, 2019. "An analysis of the historical trends in nuclear power plant construction costs: The Japanese experience," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 180-198.
    6. Matteson, Schuyler & Williams, Eric, 2015. "Residual learning rates in lead-acid batteries: Effects on emerging technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 71-79.
    7. Peter A. Lang, 2017. "Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-21, December.
    8. Bolinger, Mark & Wiser, Ryan, 2012. "Understanding wind turbine price trends in the U.S. over the past decade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 628-641.
    9. Siddons, Craig & Allan, Grant & McIntyre, Stuart, 2015. "How accurate are forecasts of costs of energy? A methodological contribution," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 224-228.
    10. Levi, Peter G. & Pollitt, Michael G., 2015. "Cost trajectories of low carbon electricity generation technologies in the UK: A study of cost uncertainty," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 48-59.
    11. Ioannidis, Romanos & Koutsoyiannis, Demetris, 2020. "A review of land use, visibility and public perception of renewable energy in the context of landscape impact," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    12. Knopf, Brigitte & Nahmmacher, Paul & Schmid, Eva, 2015. "The European renewable energy target for 2030 – An impact assessment of the electricity sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 50-60.
    13. Marques, António Cardoso & Fuinhas, José Alberto & Neves, Sónia Almeida, 2018. "Ordinary and Special Regimes of electricity generation in Spain: How they interact with economic activity," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P1), pages 1226-1240.
    14. Samadi, Sascha, 2018. "The experience curve theory and its application in the field of electricity generation technologies – A literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 2346-2364.
    15. Akdag, Seyit Ahmet & Güler, Önder, 2010. "Evaluation of wind energy investment interest and electricity generation cost analysis for Turkey," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(8), pages 2574-2580, August.
    16. Alessandro Piazza & Fabrizio Perretti, 2015. "Categorical Stigma and Firm Disengagement: Nuclear Power Generation in the United States, 1970–2000," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(3), pages 724-742, June.
    17. Marques, António Cardoso & Fuinhas, José Alberto & Menegaki, Angeliki N., 2014. "Interactions between electricity generation sources and economic activity in Greece: A VECM approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 34-46.
    18. Paul L. Joskow, 2011. "Comparing the Costs of Intermittent and Dispatchable Electricity Generating Technologies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 238-241, May.
    19. Boccard, Nicolas, 2010. "Economic properties of wind power: A European assessment," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3232-3244, July.
    20. Magee, Christopher L. & Devezas, Tessaleno C., 2017. "A simple extension of dematerialization theory: Incorporation of technical progress and the rebound effect," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 196-205.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electricity; Nuclear Power; Levelized Cost; Alternative Fuels;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.