Competitiveness, an asset for nuclear power

The French Court of Auditors estimates at 60 euros/MWh the cost of operating reactors. This cost includes a fair remuneration of the initial investment. Cash costs represent future charges concerning maintenance, exploitation and upgrading or safety investments for a nuclear reactor. Cash costs are about 36 euros/MWh. The cost of the Flamanville EPR has been reassessed at 12.7 billions euros which is almost the cost of the pair of EPR built at Taishan (in China). Concerning the EPR-2 reactor, the cost of the construction of 3 pairs of reactors is estimated to be 51.7 billions euros. System costs are complete costs of power systems for instance they include the cost of flexibility tools that are needed to compensate the intermittent power production of renewable energies. The social complete cost (or full cost) adds to the system costs the costs of accidents, wastes, sanitary impacts... Nuclear power appears to have one of the lowest full cost of all energies. (A.C.)