Economics of Plutonium Utilisation in Electric Power Systems

In evaluating the cost of power from a nuclear station, one of the more contentious features is still perhaps that of accounting for fuel bred within the reactor itself. For present purposes such bred fuel will be identified with plutonium. Among various ways of accounting for plutonium may be mentioned: (i) assignment of some fixed monetary value per unit amount; (ii) the use of indifference curves; (iii) closed system analysis; any one of which may be used with widely differing sets of assumptions.