Economic analysis of two nuclear fuel cycle options

Highlights: • We model equilibrium material flows processes on two nuclear fuel cycle options. • Monte Carlo simulation was used to get the statistical results with deviations. • We set the time frame to schematically describe the fuel cycle processes. • We determined all component costs separately discounted to the base year. - Abstract: There are two major nuclear fuel cycle options in the world: the once-through cycle (OTC) option and the closed fuel cycle (CFC) option which consists of the thermal reactor recycle (TRR) and the fast reactor recycle (FRR). Presently, the TRR option has been industrially implemented in some European countries while the FRR option is still under development internationally. In this paper, the economic analysis of OTC and TRR options was carried out using levelized fuel cycle cost (LFCC). The two options were analyzed by calculating the equilibrium material flows as well as the economic costs of the overall fuel cycle components. The LFCCs of the two options were obtained as follows: OTC $5.94 ± 0.67 mills/kW h and TRR $6.13 ± 0.55 mills/kW h. Taking all uncertainties into considerations, the two options' costs were in the same range. In addition, the sensitivity analysis was made to figure out the breakeven uranium price ($112/kgHM), at which uranium price from OTC was economically competitive to TRR option slightly. Under the most possible international circumstance, it indicates a decreasing breakeven uranium price in future, which means TRR option would be more economical than OTC option