Analysis of near optimum design for small and medium size nuclear power plants

Market surveys in recent years have shown that a significant market would exist among the developing nations of the world for nuclear power plants that would be classified as small to medium sized, provided that these small plants could produce electricity at a unit price comparable to that of equivalent sized fossil fired plants. Nuclear plants in the range of 100 MWe to 500 MWe would fit more effectively into the relatively smaller grids of most developing nations than would the 900 MWe to 1300 MWe units now being constructed in the large industrial nations. Worldwide re-evaluation of the worth of fossil fuels has prompted a re-examination of the competitive position of small to medium sized nuclear generating units compared to comparable fossil fired units, especially in the context of units specifically optimized for the size range of interest, rather than of designs that are simply scaled down versions of the currently available larger units. Since the absolute cost of electricity is more sensitive to external factors such as cost of money, national inflation rate and time required for licensing and construction than to details of design or perhaps even to choice of fuels, and since the cost of electricity generated in small to medium sized fossil fired units is periodically compared to that of scaled down versions of conventional large nuclear units, the point of view taken here is one of comparing the relative generating costs of smaller nuclear units of optimum design with the corresponding costs of scaled down versions of current large nuclear generating units