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The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing
Abstract
The paper reviews the history and the economics of the French PWR program, which is arguably the most successful nuclear-scale up experience in an industrialized country. Key to this success was a unique institutional framework that allowed for centralized decision making, a high degree of standardization, and regulatory stability, epitomized by comparatively short reactor construction times.Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. Conversely, operating costs have remained remarkably flat, despite lowered load factors resulting from the need for load modulation in a system where base-load nuclear power plants supply three quarters of electricity.The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
... Mais, avec le recul, ces tensions semblaient alors se dérouler dans le cadre d'un jeu d'acteurs relativement classique, à l'intérieur d'une distribution des rôles claire, sous l'égide d'un État à la fois arbitre et stratège. La place centrale occupée par l'État dans les affaires nucléaires françaises a été mise en avant comme un facteur décisif de la réussite du programme électronucléaire : pour (Grubler, 2010), le nucléaire a mieux réussi en France qu'ailleurs (en particulier dans les nations décentralisées comme l'Allemagne ou les États-Unis) du fait, précisément, de la centralisation politique de la France et de sa tradition interventionniste, a priori adaptées à une industrie en besoin de stabilité, de continuité, de prévisibilité. Pour (Finon et Staropoli, 2001), « un fort appui politique, un monopole d'État sur l'électricité doté de ressources d'ingénierie substantielles, une industrie électromécanique hautement concentrée, une agence de R&D influente, opérant dans le cadre d'une grande stabilité de la régulation, et une coordination efficace, résultant d'arrangements organisationnels de long terme » étaient autant d'ingrédients à l'origine du succès du programme électronucléaire. ...
... La littérature est assez riche en articles et ouvrages qui analysent les coûts de construction de ces réacteurs 3 . Deux questions principales traversent ces études : 1) le 3. Citons notamment (Moynet, 1984 ;Parsons et Du, 2003 ;Koomey et Hultman, 2007 ;MIT, 2009 ;Grubler, 2010 ;Thomas, 2010 ;MIT, 2011 ;Hogue, 2012 ;Locatelli et Mancini, 2012 ;Duquesnoy, 2013 ;D'haeseleer, 2013 ;Berthélémy et Escobar, 2015 ;Escobar et Lévêque, 2015 ;Rothwell, 2015 ;Lovering et al., 2016Lovering et al., , 2017Koomey et al., 2017). ...
... Elles sont présentées en figure 3.3. Les chiffres des coûts donnés par la Cour, déflatés par le prix du PIB et assez proches de ceux analysés par Grubler (2010), dénotent un accroissement tendanciel des coûts (c'est la courbe en pointillés, tracée par la Cour) de l'ordre de 2 %/an. ...
Cet ouvrage expose les éléments économiques factuels, précis, complets et accessibles de l’énergie nucléaire afin de contribuer à un débat éclairé et dépassionné.Il présente, dans un premier temps, une analyse approfondie des politiques stratégiques relatives à l’énergie nucléaire en France et dans le monde. Puis, il traite de la formation des coûts de production de l’électricité nucléaire, que ce soit pour les réacteurs actuels ou du futur. Les aspects méthodologiques sont présentés de manière exhaustive et illustrés d’exemples et d’études de cas détaillés.Enfin, Économie de l’énergie nucléaire 1 propose une étude économique pertinente de la composante combustible de l’énergie nucléaire. Dans ce cadre, les aspects relatifs au marché de l’uranium sont présentés avant de décrire précisément les composantes techniques et économiques qui se trouvent en amont du cycle nucléaire.
... Whether this trend is reversible, is subject to debate: Drawing on the historic expansion of pressurized water reactors in France, Berthélemy and Escobar Rangel [16] suggest reinforced investments and standardization could lower construction costs and time. Grubler [17] however states that the expansion of pressurized water reactors never achieved positive learning effects in the first place. ...
... To assess the range of overnight construction costs, we reviewed different academic publications and industry reports providing 88 individual future projections or reported costs for different reactor concepts and countries [33,34,35,12,36,37,38,39,40,41,23,17,42,7,43,44,33,45,46,47]. We put a focus on light-water reactors (LWR), the most common reactor concept 1 , and OECD countries since [12] observes non-OECD estimates are not comparable. ...
... 2 Some literature suggests that historically, learning rates of 5 to 10% were achieved in the nuclear industy which would coincide with the mentioned projections [16,49,50]. However, the discrepancy between projected and actual costs is in line with previous analyses on the actual development of nuclear construction costs in Western countries since the 1970s [17,51,52,53,54], placing doubt on supposed learning rates. The right boxplot in Fig. 1 presents a similar image for construction time. ...
Many governments consider the construction of new nuclear power plants to support the decarbonization of the energy system. On the one hand, dispatchable nuclear plants can complement fluctuating generation from wind and solar, but on the other hand, escalating construction costs and times raise economic concerns. Using a detailed energy planning model, our analysis finds that even if, despite the historic trend, overnight construction costs of nuclear half to 4,000 US-$2018 per kW and construction times remain below 10 years, the cost efficient share of nuclear power in European electricity generation is only around 10%. This analysis still omits social costs of nuclear power, such as the risk of accidents or waste management. To recover their investment costs, nuclear plants must operate inflexibly and at utilization rates close to 90%. As a result, grid infrastructure, flexible demand, and storage are more efficient options to integrate fluctuating wind and PV generation.
... Some scholars have characterized this as "negative learning-by-doing." 1,2 This trend is often contrasted sharply with the steady downward trajectory of the cost of other electric generation technologies ("positive" learning-by-doing), particularly photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, wind turbines, and gas combustion turbines. 3 Budget overruns and schedule slippage in the construction of the AP1000 in the United States and the EPR in Europe indicate that the nuclear industry's economic woes have yet to be properly addressed. ...
... 10 However, outside the West, historic trajectories and recent results in NPP construction suggest that an upward cost trend is not inevitable and lower costs are possible, 11 although this interpretation and the credibility of the underlying data are disputed. 12,13 The present work wades into this fierce debate with two primary contributions: (1) novel, rich data on the design specifications of NPPs (see Appendix A), and (2) a quantitative analysis that connects the study of the nuclear industry to the literature of institutional political economy. ...
... But first I will briefly mention the prior works that collected and presented the necessary data on which subsequent analyses rely. These works have successively expanded data availability from the United States, 6,20 to France, 1,21 to several other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, 11 and finally 82% a of the global population of reactors. 22 However, most of the foregoing works (with the exception of Ref. 21) do not analyze the underlying causal determinants of LT or OCC in a quantitative or systematic way. ...
Lead time—the duration of construction and commissioning—is an important determinant of the capital cost of nuclear power plants (NPPs). For an industry dominated by a handful of multinational firms, the degree of cross-national variation is surprising. NPP lead times have historically trended upward over time in Western nations, and yet they are comparatively quick and stable in East Asia. I theorize that the institutional capacity and autonomy of subnational governments can partially explain these patterns in the data. Having assembled a novel data set on the design specifications of the global population of NPPs, I empirically document a positive association between political decentralization and NPP lead time that is not explained by observed cross-country differences in NPP design. The results are suggestive of the hypothesis that political decentralization creates conditions that slow NPP construction for nontechnical reasons. However, the findings are not robust to certain robustness checks and fail to rule out the possibility that unobserved differences in design explain this association.
... Cost evolution of photovoltaics (red, in 2022 US dollars) and nuclear power plants (blue, in 1998 French francs) in the past (data: Our World in Data [4], adapted from various sources, [5]) . capacity of the plant, i.e. how much electricity a plant can generate at most (in megawatts, MW), and the capacity factor, which describes the utilisation. ...
... In addition, the number of suppliers has increased, which also pushes down the price. of 4 13 A similar combination is difficult to achieve when building nuclear power plants or fusion reactors. In fact, the opposite is observed for nuclear power plants: an analysis [5] of costs in France shows that nuclear power plants there have become significantly more expensive per kW over the 20 years of expansion. While costs initially amounted to around 5000 French francs per kW, they had almost doubled by the 1990s. ...
In the course of the energy transition, energy generation from nuclear power - through nuclear fission and perhaps in the future through nuclear fusion - is often proposed as an alternative or supplement to renewable energy sources. There are already good reasons why electricity generation from nuclear energy is significantly more expensive than other forms of generation, while increasing dryness as a result of climate change is generally calling into question the reliability of thermal power plants. Nuclear energy is therefore unlikely to play a role in a future energy supply that relies on low costs and reliability.
... The campus-wide studies by MIT (2003MIT ( , 2009MIT ( , 2018 and the University of Chicago (2004Chicago ( , 2011 agree that nuclear power was already uncompetitive with coal and natural gas at the turn of the century-an assessment that remains valid today. Joskow (1982) already reported on economic difficulties of nuclear power, a topic later picked up by Grubler (2010) and Escobar Rangel and Lévêque (2015). Other large-scale exercises include D'haeseleer (2013) and Linares and Conchado (2013). ...
... Remember that during the seven decades of "large" nuclear power, learning effects i.e., declining unit capital costs, were never reached. On the contrary, there is evidence suggesting a discontinuity in the learning curves regarding construction costs and construction times (Portugal-Pereira et al., 2018), indicating that standardization and cross-country synergies were not reaped (Grubler, 2010;Rangel and Leveque, 2012). Some of the most ambitious regions, e.g., in the Middle East or Asia, have little experience with safety regulation Yamashita, 2015). ...
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the suitability of nuclear power as an option to combat the escalating climate emergency. Summarizing and evaluating key arguments, we elucidate why nuclear power is unsuitable for addressing climate change. The primary argument centers around the unresolved technical and human risks of accidents and proliferation, which are unlikely to be effectively mitigated in the future. Furthermore, we highlight the significant cost disparities between nuclear power and other non-fossil energy sources, such as solar photovoltaics and wind power, considering levelized costs of electricity. We also address the incompatibility of nuclear power with renewable energy systems, emphasizing the need for flexibility in the face of variable solar and wind resources. Alternative reactor technologies will not be available in time to make a major contribution. Nuclear power also poses challenges in power plant operation amid climate change and war. Ultimately, we argue that other motivations should be explored to explain the continued interest in nuclear power in some countries, as energy supply arguments alone are insufficient to justify new investments.
... One place to see this uncertainty in action is to look at real world changes in technological performance as a function of experience-what many people call 'learning.' With a wry sense of humor, Arnulf has reminded us analysts that experience does not automatically generate learning nor even improvementwith his most striking reminder from his study, shown in figure 1, of the performance of French nuclear plants (Grübler 2010). Also shown on figure 1 is the learning curve for solar. ...
... Effective industrial policy requires building (and maintaining) institutions that are good at learning how to make decisions in the context of high levels (IRENA 2021(IRENA , 2022(IRENA , 2023, compiled by Greg Nemet and colleagues, and updated by these authors. French nuclear cost data are from Grübler (2010), converted to 2020 USD. French nuclear capacity data are from the World Nuclear Association (WNA 2023). ...
Even as most mainstream policy analysts support the idea of active industrial policy, important dissenting voices still question whether government intervention is possible without extreme waste. We suggest that many of today’s debates, which echo debates of the 1970s, need updating to reflect the reality that a lot has been learned about where and how government can pursue effective industrial policy. Central to effective industrial policy is the realization that the more transformative the goals the harder it is to know which policies, technologies and business models will work—and the greater the need for “experimental” approaches to policy that put uncertainty as the centerpiece.
... In contrast, the others require more site-specific adaptations for each project, making them more expensive. Also, nuclear energy has been widely analyzed (e.g., Berthélemy & Escobar Rangel, 2015;Escobar Rangel & Leveque, 2015;Grubler, 2010;Haas et al., 2019;Lang, 2017;Lovering et al., 2016), which will be further outlined in Section 3. Additional research is conducted on storage technologies such as batteries (e.g., Beuse et al., 2020;Matteson & Williams, 2015a, 2015bNykvist & Nilsson, 2015) and power-to-gas Böhm et al., 2019), as well as hydrogen production (Schoots et al., 2008) and fuel cells (Wei et al., 2017). Further, bioenergy systems (Junginger et al., 2006), the development of fossil fuel systems with carbon capture (Li et al., 2012), transition scenario to renewables (Handayani et al., 2019), and low-carbon power plants (Rubin, 2019) were analyzed. ...
... Regarding technological learning of nuclear power plants, Grubler (2010) is one of the most famous and widely recognized works, which provides a seminal contribution and a very comprehensive analysis of the nuclear power cost developments in France and the US. He was the first to compare the specific investment costs of nuclear power plants in France and the US in the period 1970-2000. ...
The concept of technological learning is a method to anticipate the future development of the costs of technologies. It has been discussed since the 1930s as a tool for determining manufacturing cost reductions, starting in an airplane manufacturing plant, by means of learning curves and has been widely used since the 2000s in energy models to endogenize technological change. In this paper, the theoretical concept of technological learning based on energy technologies is analyzed based on examples from the literature. The main low‐carbon power generation technologies, photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind and nuclear energy were analyzed, showing different cost trends. Additionally, the impact of policy support on technological learning was discussed in concrete examples of bioethanol and heat pumps. We find that the homogeneity and the modularity of a technology are essential for high learning rates. A good proof is the manufacturing cost development of photovoltaics in recent decades, where a rather stable learning rate of 20% has been identified. On the contrary, nuclear power did not evolve into a homogeneous technology due to required environmental adaptations caused by accidents and the lack of standardization and application of new engineering approaches. In that case, the overall price further increased. Finally, another important condition is stable legal and regulatory conditions regarding the implementation.
This article is categorized under: Policy and Economics > Green Economics and Financing
... Paradoxically, the outdated Livro Branco's cost accounting was grounded in a world that no longer existed. Subsequent years would prove the divorce between these dated forecasts and the real economic costs of nuclear power (Lovering et al., 2016;Grubler, 2010;Koomeya & Hultman, 2007). One may therefore conclude that in a counterfactual world where the Socialist government endorsed the construction of Ferrel's nuclear power station, based on the Livro Branco forecasts, it would certainly have been a ruinous project. ...
Because nuclear power development entails massive initial investments in power plants, along with institutional innovations in regulation, law, and basic physical infrastructure, there are strong grounds to support the pervasiveness of the central state in the industry. Furthermore, considering the scale economies in reactor installation, standardization in design, and enhanced learning by doing, little scope remains for the consideration of decentralized business interests. This article argues that competition, in the sense of rivalry between firms, can nonetheless be a driving force behind the nuclear industry. To illustrate the point, we draw a comparative, eventful history of two Iberian nations, Portugal and Spain: Portugal has failed several attempts to introduce nuclear power, while Spain has become one of the largest nuclear power nations in Europe. A fine-grained analysis of the circumstances surrounding the nuclear history of both countries is presented, highlighting the key variables of business history and the role of the central state and political actors in economic policy.
... Finally, technologies such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and nuclear power plants, are presented to incorporate the highest degree of complexity and need for customization. In this manner, the nature of complex technologies as nuclear plants becomes large-scale, "lumpy", and requires a formidable ability to manage complexity in both construction and operation (52), together with a high degree of technical, project management, and financing capabilities (123), while in several geographic contexts, nuclear plants have been specifically custombuilt one at a time (90) because of the lack of standardization given fragmented markets, and strict and varying licensing and safety regulations. Additionally, we could also mention a technology such as fusion power plants, as an example of one with a level of complexity that would be framed outside of the proposed matrix, given its technical challenges relative to the other proposed technologies. ...
In order to achieve climate goals, the world must reach net-zero carbon emissions around mid-century, which calls for an urgent energy transition and the acceleration of low-carbon innovation. To this end, I begin by extracting insights from past transitions, exploring the factors influencing transition speed, and highlighting specificities within energy systems. Additionally, I present barriers hindering low-carbon innovation, including the concept of carbon lock-in, path dependency, and the different market failures and externalities associated with the present energy transition. I emphasize the benefits of framing these challenges within the lens of the transitions framework. Next, I delve into innovation theory and technological innovation systems, stressing the significance of understanding the evolution of technologies and knowledge for effective energy innovation policy formulation. I underscore the importance of coordination, inter-sectoral learning, and socio-political factors in technology design and selection. Furthermore, I introduce Wright´s law and the concept of learning rates for measuring innovation and technological competitiveness, presenting corresponding data for different low-carbon energy technologies. Finally, I review academic literature to explain the diverse learning patterns observed in low-carbon technologies. This examination underscores the importance of projecting technologies' competitiveness for the design of technology-specific energy innovation policies, given diverse technology-inherent characteristics.
... Indeed, this would help to ensure that the management of these projects is geared towards the most environmentally appropriate solutions for given cost and (Laraia 2012(Laraia , 2021. That said, the institutional setting of the French nuclear program allowed for a high degree of standardization during construction (Grubler 2010). Moreover, the "endof-life" stage of a nuclear site is oversighted by the ASN (Nuclear Safety Authority) for clean-up and by ANDRA for RW management. ...
Purpose
Historical French fleet of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) is near end-of-life, with 14 NPPs planned to begin decommissioning by 2035. Despite decade-old calls for more research regarding these activities’ environmental impact, very few if any studies were conducted since. Due to the French fleet high-degree of standardization, a prospective investigation regarding the Fessenheim NPP—first large-scale plant to be decommissioned in France, starting 2026—is conducted to identify results of interest beyond this case study.
Methods
A life cycle assessment is realized, following ISO 14040/44, with a functional unit defined as “the decommissioning of the Fessenheim NPP.” The system boundaries encompass four unit-processes: dismantling of electromechanical equipment, clean-up of the structures, demolition of plant buildings, and transport of conventional and radioactive waste (RW). This last unit-process is investigated separately to make a clear comparison of conventional and radioactive waste. Pre-decommissioning activities, soil rehabilitation, and RW final storage are excluded. Primary data were obtained from the decommissioning public report of EDF (Electricity of France), with scaling based on the literature and third-party reports/documents. Background processes were modeled with the ecoinvent 3.8 database. Environmental impacts are estimated using the CML-IA baseline methodology to allow comparison with previous works based on CML2001.
Results and discussion
The “Metal cutting” sub-process is found to be the major contributor to environmental impacts during dismantling, clean-up, and demolition, results varying from 62.6 to 99.5% depending on the impact category. A sensitivity analysis explores the effect of variation in shares of thermal and mechanical cutting. It demonstrates the huge potential of impact reduction for the total system under study if thermal cutting use is limited as much as possible. Despite representing only 5% of the total mass of waste, RW scores 1.8–6.6 times higher than conventional waste during transport, due to much higher distances to cover and specific conditioning. Previous explorations of results transferability are found to be methodologically uncertain, and the NPP total power installed is evaluated as an unpromising transferability factor.
Conclusions
Decommissioning of nuclear power plants is still in need of thorough studies based on exhaustive and transparent datasets. Until then, state-of-the-art prospective assessments and transferability of LCA results to future studies are severely limited. Restraint in use of oxy-acetylene cutting is nevertheless highly recommended. French unique policy regarding very low-level waste needs further consideration, and decentralized storage sites are a promising research lead.
... Indeed, some proposed plants have been cancelled before ground has even been broken [34]. Larger-scale production of traditional, large-scale reactors could similarly reduce costs if commonality of design and best practice in construction were employed [35], especially through learning from previous experience and mistakes [36]. ...
With climate change rapidly accelerating, we must seriously reconsider our inconsistent and, at times, disjointed approach to energy grid decarbonisation by applying extant low-carbon technologies rapidly and at scale rather than continuing to rely on fossil fuel generation. In contrast to more transient renewables such as wind and solar energy, nuclear power is capable of reliably generating large quantities of baseload low-carbon energy. Despite this advantage, however, deployment has stagnated due to a combination of high costs, safety concerns, and an unwillingness of political authorities to commit to a large-scale, publicly funded program. The focus on private sector leadership in R&D has resulted in a smorgasbord of under-developed and conceptual reactor and fuel cycle technologies, many of which are a decade or more from commercial viability. Meanwhile, the aforementioned political issues have prevented the necessary long-term funding, incentivisation, or provision of the necessary market structures for the significant construction of actual generating plants. With this in mind, we present a potential path to a long-term sustainable approach to the nuclear fuel cycle, highlighting key reactor and fuel cycle technologies and providing an overview of how these should be implemented. Additionally, we discuss the industrial, political, and societal changes needed to achieve this through the comprehensive management of both waste and resources.
... Note that improving these rates would likely be easier for modular technologies such as solar, and harder for more complex and centralised technologies such as nuclear. The French nuclear roll-out in the 1970s and 1980s has indeed been pointed out to be quite an extraordinary feat [62]. ...
... In the past, these learning effects have played a very decisive role in the progress made by renewable energies (Wiesenthal et al. 2012). They are much more frequently discussed and even appear as negative for nuclear energy with exogenous factors of cost increase linked to the improvement of safety, but also endogenous factors that, particularly in France, are due to the desire to introduce an increasing share of design elements and components that are domestic in origin (Grübler 2010). In this field today, the reflection focuses on the analysis of the cost reductions to be expected from the effects of equipment size, which are opposed by the serial effects in the production of "granular" technologies based on small components (Wilson et al. 2020). ...
... The key arguments for the faster growth of granular technologies are better access to investment capital, as well as faster experience accumulation leading to faster learning and cost decline [18]. While the costs of solar and wind have been declining much faster than the costs of nuclear did [4,72] we find that renewables still grow slower than nuclear in the 1980s. This finding not only supports the argument in the literature [23,26,27,[73][74][75][76][77] that costs are not the single factor driving the growth of policy-driven and socially-embedded technologies, but it goes further by quantitatively demonstrating that more expensive technologies can in fact grow faster. ...
Climate change mitigation requires rapid expansion of low-carbon electricity but there is a disagreement on whether available technologies such as renewables and nuclear power can be scaled up sufficiently fast. Here we analyse the diffusion of nuclear (from the 1960s), as well as wind and solar (from the 1980-90s) power at the national level. We show that all these technologies have been adopted in most large economies except major energy exporters, but solar and wind diffused across countries faster and wider than nuclear. After the initial adoption, the maximum annual growth for nuclear power has been 2.6% of total electricity supply (IQR 1.3%-6%), for wind – 1.1% (0.6%-1.7%), and for solar – 0.8% (0.5%-1.3%). The fastest growth of nuclear power occurred in Western Europe in the 1980s, a response by industrialised democracies to the energy supply crises of the 1970s. The European Union, currently experiencing a similar energy supply shock, is planning to expand wind and solar at similarly high rates. This illustrates that national contexts can impact the speed of technology diffusion at least as much as technology characteristics like cost, granularity, and complexity. In the IPCC climate change mitigation pathways, renewables grow much faster than nuclear due to their lower projected costs, though empirical evidence does not show that the cost is the sole factor determining the speed of diffusion. We demonstrate that expanding low-carbon electricity in line with the 1.5°C target in Asia requires some growth of nuclear power even if renewables increase similarly to the most ambitious European Union’s plans, and that 2°C-consistent pathways in Asia are compatible with replicating China’s nuclear power plans to the whole region, while also replicating the projected near-term growth of renewables in the EU. Our analysis demonstrates the usefulness of empirically-benchmarked feasibility spaces for context-sensitive future technology projections.
... With 56 NPPs in operation and 1 NPP under construction [19], France, the United Kingdom, and Finland represent the countries in Europe that are building NPPs on their territories. In France, the nuclear industry is a national reference and exports its technology to the rest of the world [73]. Likewise, nuclear energy in the country accounts for 70% of the energy generated; therefore, it will continue to bet on the long-term operation of its NPPs in operation [74]. ...
In the current situation of global energy transition, nuclear energy maintains its reputation as a stable power generation technology, without dependence on other resources and without CO2 emissions. However, one of the main problems with its use is the management of the radioactive waste it generates, which has given rise to different international strategies: (i) reprocessing; (ii) storage; and (iii) disposal. Given the interest generated by nuclear energy in recent times and the need to manage the waste generated, this paper presents a global review of the different international nuclear waste management strategies, using a scientific method based on (i) a bibliometric review of the scientific publications related to nuclear waste management and (ii) an analysis of the technical aspects of the different international management strategies. The effective and safe management of nuclear waste will contribute to the advancement of international nuclear energy development strategies that encourage the construction of new nuclear power plants and the lifetime extension of existing ones.
... None of these projected consequences is inevitable. Learning is difficult to sustain in complex technologies like nuclear power (Grubler 2010). Domestic content requirements for mature massproduced technologies like solar photovoltaics and lithium-ion batteries may slow learning in these fields if domestic producers are unable to draw on knowledge held by foreign producers, particularly in China (Helveston et al 2022). ...
This Perspective sketches how recent legislation in the United States may impact the domestic and global energy and climate innovation systems, drawing on systems concepts articulated by Arnulf Grubler (1998). It also sets out risks and gaps that could lead to less favorable outcomes.
... Technologies exhibit a range of cost trajectories 1-3 from the rapidly falling costs of integrated circuits and photovoltaic (PV) systems 4,5 to the rising costs of nuclear power plants 6,7 . Across technologies, cost declines are often slowed by 'soft costs', the costs of processes and services that are needed to design and deploy hardware. ...
Technology hardware and deployment processes (‘soft technology’) seem fundamentally different, but little work examines the nature of this difference and its implications for technology improvement. Here we present a model to study the roles of hardware and soft technology in cost evolution and apply it to solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Differing properties of hardware and soft technology help explain PV’s cost decline. Rapid improvements in hardware affected globally traded components that lowered both hardware and soft costs. Improvements in soft technology occurred more slowly, were not shared as readily across locations and only affected soft costs, ultimately contributing less than previously estimated. As a result, initial differences in soft technology across countries persisted and the share of soft costs rose. In general, we show the usefulness of modelling dependencies between technology costs and features to understand past drivers of cost change and inform future technology development.
... Its consultations were substantially shaped by the impression of the oil crisis, which led it to recommend a de-coupling of energy supply from external sources and imports towards a stable and secure energy production within the national borders (Finon & Staropoli, 2001). This policy programme entailing an orientation towards nuclear energy is frequently viewed as a vision to guide the policy sector, developed by the central institutions of French nuclear energy policymaking (CEA, EDF, Ministry of Industry) (Grubler, 2010). ...
... We implement the technology learning effect for combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) with a learning rate of 15%, nuclear power (-1%), onshore wind power (17%), offshore wind power (9%), solar PV (34%), waste incineration, biomass and biogas (11%). A negative learning rate is set for nuclear power since empirical research repeatedly shows that the costs for nuclear power plants have an increasing trend despite growing cumulative installed capacity [51,55]. The learning effect is not applied to coal and lignite-fired power plants since they frequently show stable trends since the 1980s [56] and generally cannot be considered as a new emerging technology in our model timeframe. ...
Bottom-up, technology-rich electricity system models are commonly used to generate scenarios for policy support at a national or global level. In literature, previous hindcasting studies (also called retrospective modeling or ex-post modeling) evaluated existing models rather than sought to inform model development from the beginning. In this study, we present a hindcasting exercise with D-EXPANSE model for national electricity systems in 31 European countries over the 1990-2019 period. We develop several model versions with or without elastic electricity demand and with or without endogenous technology learning, and use hindcasting to choose the most accurate configuration of the bottom-up model. The hindcasting results show that a model with endogenous elastic demand can capture well the real-world evolution of electricity demand, if elasticity factor is chosen well and if the countries did not undergo severe structural changes. Endogenous technology learning, however, increases the uptake of new emerging technologies in cost-optimal scenarios, but still cannot fully capture the real-world dynamics and at times even introduces further inaccuracies.
... As a result, nuclear power grew from 4% of national electricity supply in 1970 to 10% in 1978 and almost 40% by 1982. As Grubler has noted, "the reasons for this success lay in a unique institutional setting allowing centralized decision-making, regulatory stability, dedicated efforts for standardized reactor designs and a powerful nationalized utility, EDF, whose substantial in-house engineering resources enabled it to act as principal and agent of reactor construction simultaneously [118]". ...
The 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shifted the nature of the political economy challenge associated with achieving a global emissions trajectory that is consistent with a climate. The shifts generated by CoP21 place country decision-making and country policies at centre stage. Under moderately optimistic assumptions concerning the vigour with which CoP21 objectives are pursued, nearly every country in the world will set about to design and implement the most promising and locally relevant policies for achieving their agreed contribution to global mitigation. These policies are virtually certain to vary dramatically across countries. In short, the world stands at the cusp of an unprecedented era of policy experimentation in driving a clean energy transition. This book steps into this new world of broad-scale and locally relevant policy experimentation. The chapters focus on the political economy of clean energy transition with an emphasis on specific issues encountered in both developed and developing countries. Lead authors contribute a broad diversity of experience drawn from all major regions of the world, representing a compendium of what has been learned from recent initiatives, mostly (but not exclusively) at country level, to reduce GHG emissions. As this new era of experimentation dawns, their contributions are both relevant and timely.
... 60-80% of NP's levelized cost are capital costs (Haas et al. 2019b). Since the 1970s capital costs in the USA and France are escalating (Koomey and Hultman 2007;Grubler 2010). Lovering et al. (2016) fabricated a hypothesis about NP becoming competitive by technology diffusion, economies of scale, and positive learning. ...
... However, external stakeholders are still unable to transparently understand the assumptions on economies of scale and potential synergies. In the past, especially for the construction of NPPs, the nuclear industry has failed to deliver on such promises (Koomey and Hultman 2007;Grubler 2010). Finally, we can also see signs of access to waste disposal having feedback effects on the nuclear industry (for example, regarding new builds and current operation). ...
... Both review studies commonly show that the learning rates of solar PV are the largest (8-47%) while those of nuclear power are the lowest, with ample evidence of negative learning (− 25-6%). For instance, the cost escalation of nuclear power with the cumulative installation was commonly observed in the early-adopting countries [21,22]. The learning rates on coal, CCGT, and onshore wind generally show modest learning rates compared to the solar PV, with few studies also showing negative learning rates. ...
Like many countries responding to climate change, Korea also faces an unprecedented transformation of its
power sector into a low-carbon system. To evaluate the most advantageous combination of technologies and
necessary policies for achieving the goals of such a transformation, this study decomposes the historical
development of the total cost of five major power technologies in Korea into three cost components and identifies
the underlying driving forces and variabilities of each. We then project the likely distribution of costs in 2030
using Monte-Carlo simulation and simulate the possible impact of climate and environmental policies on the
economic landscape of competing technologies. Our results show that the business-as-usual dynamics of key
techno-economic-market factors are not likely to secure the economic viability of the proposed energy transition
in Korea. Introducing carbon prices or strict environmental policy is imperative in Korea to make renewables and
less carbon-intensive gas power remain cost-competitive with coal power.
... The share of nuclear power in electricity generation declined from 17.5% of the global electricity generation in 1995 to slightly less than 10% in 2021 [106,107]. Budget overruns of nuclear power plants in recent years, but also decades-long substantial negative learning rates [108,109] have made investors sceptical, making it challenging to augment capital [110]. The share of newly added nuclear power capacity in total added power capacity in the world has become very low for the last ten years [111]. ...
This study presents a novel energy system modelling approach for the analysis and comparison of global energy transition pathways for the decarbonisation of the electricity sector. The results of the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the Teske/DLR scenarios are each reproduced. Additionally, five new energy transition tra-jectories, called LUT, are presented. The research examines the feasibility of each scenario across nine major regions in 5-year intervals, from 2015 to 2050, under a uniform modelling environment with identical technical and financial assumptions. The main differences between the energy transition paths are identified across: (1) the average electricity generation costs; (2) energy diversity; (3) system flexibility; (4) energy security; and, (5) transition dynamics. All LUT and Teske/DLR scenarios are transitioned to zero CO2 emissions and a 100% renewable energy system by 2050 at the latest. Results reveal that the LUT scenarios are the least-cost pathways, while the Teske/DLR scenarios are centred around energy diversity with slightly higher LCOE of around 10-20%. The IEA shares similarities with the Teske/DLR scenarios in terms of energy diversity yet depends on the continued use of fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power. The IEA scenario based on current governmental policies presents a worst-case situation regarding CO2 emissions reduction, climate change and overall system costs.
... These reactors are much smaller than Third Generation reactors and are designed to be modular in nature in order to reduce capital costs through learning-by-doing. Existing nuclear reactor sizes have broadly increased over time to benefit from economies of scale [47], as smaller reactors need similar investments in safety systems as large reactors. While HTGRs are designed with inherent safety features, it is not clear that they could be operated safely without a similar range of safety systems. ...
Swift and deep decarbonisation of electricity generation is central to enabling a timely transition to net-zero emission energy systems. While future power systems will likely be dominated by variable renewable energy (VRE) sources, studies have identified a need for low-carbon dispatchable power such as nuclear. We use a cost-optimising power system model to examine the technoeconomic case for investment in new nuclear capacity in the UK's net-zero emissions energy system and consider four sensitivity dimensions: the capital cost of new nuclear, the availability of competing technologies, the expansion of interconnection and weather conditions. We conclude that new nuclear capacity is only cost-effective if ambitious cost and construction times are assumed, competing technologies are unavailable and interconnector expansion is not permitted. We find that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and long-term storage could reduce electricity system costs by 5–21% and that synchronous condensers can provide cost-effective inertia in highly renewable systems with low amounts of synchronous generation. We show that a nearly 100% variable renewable system with very little fossil fuels, no new build nuclear and facilitated by long-term storage is the most cost-effective system design. This suggests that the current favourable UK Government policy towards nuclear is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.
... Nuclear energy increased from 4% in 1970 to 10% of the national electric supply in 1978; it was almost 40% in 1982. According to Grubler (2010), the reasons for this success can be aligned as follows: the presence of a perfect institutional environment that allows for centralized decision-making; standardized reactor design; regulatory stability; in-house engineering resources; and a strong nationalized utility company that allows them to act as the main representative of reactor construction. ...
Over the years, the global energy demand has been rising exponentially with an increasing population. Considering this, catering to the aforementioned needs has been one of the major challenges of the current era. Moreover, the release of harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-producing industries has also been severely polluting the environment and contributing to global warming. Hence, to meet the energy demand, it is important that the production and distribution losses in the energy cycle are minimized, and innovative environment-friendly systems get developed. This can only be achieved effectively by the constant digitalization of the energy sector. Taking into account the adaptation of digitalization in the energy sector, this chapter highlights the importance of digitalization in the energy sector, reviews the current digitalization trends being followed by stakeholders around the world, and explains the digitalization technologies being currently deployed to accomplish data-driven decision-making in alignment to their impact. It further addresses the concerns and challenges of digitalization and ultimately discusses the future of digitalization in the energy sector. This work will enable the researchers and practitioners to learn about the current dynamics of digitalization being followed across the globe and what needs to be done to ensure the sustainability of the energy sector.
... Within, it struggled to gain legitimacy and credibility in relation to more groundbreaking innovations -the longstanding hopes for Generation IV and nuclear fusion, and the recent promise of small modular reactors. Outsider critics, in turn, asked why the EPR would escape the 'more of the same' trap of negative learning curves observed in the past (Grubler 2010), and the long legacy of opacity in the nuclear sector, not least on economics. The in-between nature of the EPR also hampered the requalification efforts entailed in the FOAK argument: Why would prototypes at multiple sites be needed, if indeed the design represented merely an incremental improvement, the critics asked. ...
Technological innovation needs construction of promises and expectations to mobilise resources and supportive networks, yet exaggerated promises risk leading to disappointment and undermining this very support. Drawing on an analysis of secondary literature and press articles, the concepts of hype cycle and Regimes of Economics of Techno-scientific Promises (ETP) are applied to examine the construction of the largely failed promise of the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), designed to spearhead a French-led ‘nuclear renaissance’ in the 1990s. The debates on the EPR economics in France and the UK illustrate the country-specific features that condition the ability of an incremental in-between innovation, in an archetypically 'modernist' field of technology, to survive in today's 'presentist' era of shrinking timeframes. The phase of disillusionment depicted in the hype cycle can better be described as two country-specific processes whereby the initial promise was continuously modified and requalified in order to maintain its legitimacy and credibility. As an incremental innovation, the EPR continues to struggle between the contrasting needs of demonstrating radical novelty and experience-based continuity. This tension is accentuated by the country-specific legacies and imaginaries, including the historically shaped ideological trust in the state and the market.
... Although now particularly visible in 'liberalised' energy markets (Thomas 2010), these challenges are nothing new. Indeed, whether it is the French state-financed programmes of the 1970s or 1980s or more liberalised trends between 2010-2020, a 'negative learning curve' shows even incremental nuclear designs tend to get more expensive over time (Grubler 2010). ...
Nuclear power has long offered an iconic context for addressing risk and controversy surrounding megaprojects-including trends towards cost overruns, management failures, governance challenges , and accountability breaches. Less attention has focused on reasons why countries continue new nuclear construction despite these well-documented problems. Whilst other analysis tends to frame associated issues in terms of energy provision, this paper will explore how civil nuclear infrastructures subsist within wider 'infrastructure ecologies'-encompassing ostensibly discrete meg-aprojects across both civil and military nuclear sectors. Attending closely to the UK case, we show how understandings of megapro-jects can move beyond bounded sectoral and time horizons to include infrastructure patterns and rhythms that transcend the usual academic and policy silos. By illuminating strong military-related drivers modulating civil nuclear 'infrastructure rhythms' in the UK, key issues arise concerning bounded notions of a 'megaproject' in this context-for instance in how costs are calculated around what seems a far more deeply and broadly integrated 'nuclear complex'. Major undeclared interdependencies between civilian and military nuclear activities raise significant implications for policymaking and wider democracy. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Data on capital expenditure on nuclear energy are rather homogenous and potentially go back several decades, as the world's first nuclear power plant to produce usable electricity through atomic fission was built in the early 1950s. Despite this, up until a few years ago, the literature on the construction costs of nuclear power reactors looked solely to the development between 1970 and the end of the 1980s in the costs of construction in two countries (France and the United States), leaving out about three quarters of reactors built globally between 1960 and 2010 (see for example Grubler, 2010, andBerthélemy andEscobar-Rangel, 2015). More recently, data has been produced to map historical reactorspecific overnight construction cost (OCC) data covering the full cost history for existing reactors in the Canada, France, Germany, Japan, India, South Korea and the United States, encompassing about two-thirds of all reactors built globally (Lovering, Yip and Nordhaus, 2016). ...
Is there a trade-off between spending on the green economy and an economy's strength? This paper addresses this question by estimating output multipliers for spending in clean energy and biodiversity conservation, and by comparing these to multipliers of spending on non-ecofriendly energy and land use activities. Using a new international dataset, we arrive at two key results. First, we find that every dollar spent on key carbon-neutral or carbon-sink activities can generate more than a dollar's worth of economic activity, whereas non-green spending returns less than a dollar. Second, for categories of spending where formal comparisons are possible, like renewable versus fossil fuel energy, we find that multipliers on green spending are about twice as large as their non-green counterparts. The point estimates of the multipliers are 1.1–1.7 for renewable energy investment and 0.4–0.7 for fossil fuel energy investment, depending on horizon and specification. These findings survive several robustness checks and lend support to bottom-up analyses that find that stabilizing climate and reversing biodiversity loss go hand in hand with economic prosperity.
... SMR advocates counter with the argument that this can be compensated through savings from assembly line manufacture. There is good reason to be skeptical of the idea that learning from manufacturing many units will result in declining costs: in the United States and France, the two nations with the highest numbers of nuclear reactors, reactor construction costs have increased with experience (Boccard, 2014;Grubler, 2010Grubler, , 2013Hultman et al., 2007;Rangel & Lévêque, 2013). In other words, learning across the whole fleet, as measured by economic indicators, has been negative. ...
Nuclear power plant construction has historically been challenged by problems of high cost, cost escalation, and construction delays. The newest set of large reactor projects have also been overbudget and overtime. This has prompted interest in new reactor technologies that proponents claim would not suffer these problems, specifically small modular reactors (SMRs), a class that encompasses a wide range of technologies. This article examines national efforts in three countries, Canada, the UK, and the United States, which are pursuing SMRs vigorously and where the government has funded their development generously. We compare the different strategies and foci of these national strategies, analyzing the various forms of support offered by the separate agencies of the government, and the private companies that are trying to develop SMRs. We also offer an overview of the different types of reactor technologies being pursued in these different countries. Following these, we outline the main challenge confronting SMR technologies: their ability to generate electricity in an economically competitive manner, highlighting the problems resulting from economies of scale being lost. By examining the experience so far, we find that even designs based on well‐tested technology cannot be deployed till after 2030 and the more radical designs might never be.
This article is categorized under: Policy and Economics > Research and Development
Policy and Economics > Regional and International Strategies
Energy and Power Systems > Energy Infrastructure
Zusammenfassung
Im Vergleich zu erneuerbaren Energien sind Kernkraftwerke deutlich teurer in den Stromgestehungskosten. Pro Kilowatt Leistung sind Kernkraftwerke zudem über die letzten Jahrzehnte immer teurer geworden, während die Erneuerbaren immer günstiger wurden. Außerdem wird durch das variable Einspeisen aus Sonne und Wind die verbleibende Netzlast geringer, die noch gedeckt werden muss. Die verbleibenden Lücken in der Stromerzeugung lassen sich gut durch Gaskraftwerke schließen. Diese haben wesentlich geringere Investitionskosten als Kernkraftwerke. Sollten die gegenwärtigen Trends bei der Wasserverfügbarkeit im Zuge des Klimawandels anhalten, dann könnte zudem der Mangel an Kühlwasser den Beitrag von thermischen Kraftwerken an der Stromerzeugung einschränken, vor allem in den trockenen Sommermonaten. Insbesondere die Kernenergie steht also vor zwei Problemen: Sie ist sehr teuer und bietet in künftigen, trockenen Sommern keine Versorgungssicherheit mehr.
This paper analyses how a forced transition to low-carbon energy impacts the innovation of new energy technologies. We apply the insights to nuclear fusion, potentially a large provider of carbon-free energy currently attracting billions in private investments. We discuss the ‘fastest-feasible-growth (FFG)’-curve for transitions: exponential growth followed by linear growth, where the rate of latter is limited by the inverse lifetime of the installation. We analyse how innovation is affected if, during rapid deployment, a technology progresses through several generations. We identify key timescales: the learning time, the generation time, the build time, and the exponential growth time of the early deployment phase and compare these for different energy technologies. We distinguish learning rate-limited and generation-time-limited innovation. Applying these findings to fusion energy, we find that a long build time may slow deployment, slow learning, and promote early technology lock-in. Slow learning can be remedied by developing multiple concepts in parallel. Probabilistic analysis of value implies that the optimal strategy is to parallelise the development of many concepts. This concurs with the present surge in private investment in multiple concepts. For this strategy to be successful, the build time of the power plant must be minimized. This requirement favours concepts that lend themselves to modularisation and parallelisation of production and assembly.
Climate policies are often assumed to have significant impacts on the nature and speed of energy transitions. To investigate this hypothesis, we develop an approach to categorise, trace, and compare energy transitions across countries and time periods. We apply this approach to analyse electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU between 1960 and 2022, specifically examining whether and how climate policies altered the transitions beyond historical trends. Additionally, we conduct a feasibility analysis of the required transition in these countries by 2035 to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C. We find that climate policies have so far had limited impacts: while they may have influenced the choice of deployed technologies and the type of transitions, they have not accelerated the growth of low-carbon technologies or hastened the decline of fossil fuels. Instead, electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU have strongly correlated with the changes in electricity demand throughout the last six decades. In contrast, meeting the 1.5°C target requires unprecedented supply-centred transitions by 2035 where all G7 countries and the EU must expand low-carbon electricity five times faster and reduce fossil fuels two times faster on average compared to the rates in 2015–2020. This highlights the insufficiency of incremental changes and the need for a radically stronger effort to meet the climate target.
Decarbonising the power sector requires feasible strategies for the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and the expansion of low-carbon sources. This study assesses the feasibility of plausible decarbonisation scenarios for the power sector in the Republic of Korea through 2050 and 2060. Our power plant stock accounting model results show that achieving zero emissions from the power sector by the mid-century requires either an ambitious expansion of renewables backed by gas-fired generation equipped with carbon capture and storage or a significant increase of nuclear power. The first strategy implies replicating and maintaining for decades the maximum growth rates of solar power achieved in leading countries and becoming an early and ambitious adopter of the carbon capture and storage technology. The alternative expansion of nuclear power has historical precedents in Korea and other countries but may not be acceptable in the current political and regulatory environment. Hence, our analysis shows that the potential hurdles for decarbonisation in the power sector in Korea are formidable but manageable and should be overcome over the coming years, which gives hope to other similar countries.
The changing socio-economic context has a crucial impact in nuclear decisions and execution of the projects. The nuclear projects initiated over the past 20 years reduced their construction times relative to those initiated before. Of the over 600 the nuclear projects built over the past 70 years only 3% took longer than 15 years to complete. Analysing the lengthiest projects within their economic context, reveals that ‘when and where’, (i.e., the contextual risks) explains most the delays, thus questioning whether nuclear power plant projects are inherently examples of the megaproject ‘pathologies.’ The analysis of the lengthiest nuclear power projects makes evident that the failure to deliver nuclear plants on time and within budget was related to the historical period and/or the specific location more than to any inherent characteristics of nuclear power plants. Stakeholders of nuclear projects (and megaprojects in general) should be attentive to socio-economic changes and macro-economic impacts to avoid pitfalls.
The global demand for energy is booming day by day and yet the energy is required to be clean due to the strict environmental regulations. The current carbon-based economy primarily relies on energy extracted from fossil fuels. However, burning fossil fuels results in the emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants that are deadly to the environment. The hydrogen economy is proposed as an alternative to fossil fuels, considering the high energy density by weight of hydrogen as well as its environmentally friendly nature. This modern economy depends on green hydrogen as commercial fuel and it is considered the vital energy conversion and storage strategy to fully exploit the benefits of renewable and sustainable energy resources, for example, solar and wind energies. Hydrogen energy-related technologies (production, storage, conversion, etc.) present new research frontiers. Moreover, hydrogen combined with fuel cells provides essential energy solutions for the 21st century. Fuel cells utilize hydrogen gaseous fuel to generate electricity via an electrochemical process that provides much higher efficiencies and zero pollutant output than the conventional energy conversion technologies, for example, an internal combustion engine. In addition, the reversible fuel cells utilizing renewable energies provide the most efficient water electrolysis and they are being rapidly developed for green hydrogen production. Thus, hydrogen and fuel cells present promising potential for replacing conventional energy conversion systems with clean energy systems. This chapter briefly reviews the current research status of the hydrogen and fuel cell technologies for a viable supply and storage of clean and economical energy. The various challenges hampering the massive commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies are also identified and discussed. In addition, the market and policy trends regarding hydrogen and fuel cells are discussed.
Foreign assistance was decisive in the formation of the teams in charge of nuclear science, technology and industry in Spain. France played a key role from the end of World War Two, assisting Spanish expertise in all stages of the uranium cycle, from mining to disposal. In this paper, after examining the configuration of the French nuclear complex and the start of French-Spanish cooperation, we will focus on the training of Spanish nuclear personnel, in both the scientific-technical and the industrial side. We will try to prove the importance of France in the whole Western nuclear assistance, and also that, though France was unable to supplant the United States, it was able to grab significant projects and influence in Spain. In the end, nuclear learning proved to be a cumulative and mutual (not symmetrical) process, which far exceeded the temporal, geographical and sectorial limits initially marked out.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KCPEEUS7SQQKIZNIRAF4/full?target=10.1080/07341512.2022.2076402
11.1 Introduction Changes in products, devices, processes, and practices—that is, changes in technology—largely determine the development and consequences of industrial society. Historical evidence (e.g., Freeman 1989; Mokyr 1990; Maddison 1991; Grübler 1998) and economic theory (Tinbergen 1942; Solow 1957; Denison 1962, 1985; Griliches 1996) confirm that advances in technological knowledge are the single most important contributing factor to long-term productivity and economic growth. Technology is also central to the long-term evolution of the environment and to development problems now on policy agendas worldwide under the general rubric, "global change." Although technology is central, technological change is typically the least satisfactory aspect of global change modeling. Each of the fac-tors that determine the wide range of projected emissions of, say, carbon dioxide (CO 2)—such as the future level of economic activity (largely driven by advances in productivity), the energy required for each unit of economic output, and the carbon emitted for each unit of energy consumed—is a function of technology. This also applies to the technological linkages in any kind of macro or sectoral production function (Abramovitz 1993). Consequently, technology largely ac-counts for the wide range seen in published long-term carbon emission estimates. A recent review of the literature (Nakicenovic et al. 1998b) indicates an emis-sions range spanning from 2 GtC (gigatons, 10 15 grams, of elemental carbon) to well above 40 GtC by 2100. This wide span is largely explained by differences in technology-related assumptions such as macroeconomic productivity growth, en-ergy intensities, and availability and costs of low-and zero-carbon technological alternatives. In this chapter we outline a model of endogenous technological change that is applied to the energy sector and the CO 2 emissions problem. Like any model, it is an abstraction of our understanding of how "the system works." Therefore, we begin by outlining a number of stylized abstractions from our review of the 280 Arnulf Grübler and Andrii Gritsevskyi 281 theoretical and empirical literature (Section 11.2). We emphasize in particular that, like all knowledge, improved technological knowledge can exhibit increas-ing returns. These are, however, highly uncertain, resulting in diverse innova-tion strategies reflecting different technological "expectations" (Rosenberg 1996) by a multitude of actors. Adopting the term "innovation" in the Schumpeterian sense means that all innovative activity is essentially economic, that is, technol-ogy arises from "within" (Schumpeter 1934) the economy and society at large. Innovation is costly, requiring up-front expenditures in improving technological knowledge in its disembodied form [typically research and development (R&D)] and in its embodied form (plants and equipment). This leads to the formulation of a multi-actor, multiregion model of uncertain increasing returns to technological innovation. In this model, innovation costs include both R&D and expenditures on physical plants and equipment that lead to improvements via learning by doing and learning by using. The basic elements of the model and its most salient pa-rameterizations and input assumptions are outlined in Section 11.3 in a nonmath-ematical way. Section 11.4 presents some illustrative quantitative model results, exploring in particular changes in patterns of technology diffusion and carbon emissions under alternative assumptions concerning uncertainty about resource availability and costs, energy demand, technology characteristics, and the exis-tence of uncertain environmental limits that are examined in both the absence and the presence of uncertain increasing returns phenomena. Conclusions are pre-sented in Section 11.5, highlighting in particular the implications for analytical "next steps" toward the challenge of a deeper theoretical and empirical under-standing of the mechanisms and incentives driving technological change.
France is the only country in the world ever to operate a commercial scale (1,200 MWe) sodium cooled, plutonium fuelled fast breeder reactor, the Superphénix at Creys-Malville. However, the French fast breeder reactor program turned out to be too costly and could never compete with light water reactor technology. Numerous technical prob-lems, low uranium prices and massive opposition exacerbated the poor economic and operational performance of the fast breeder reactor. Superphénix only operated about half of the time that it was officially connected to the grid and was shut down in 1998 with a lifetime load factor of less than 7%. The Superphénix predecessor, Phénix at Marcoule, which began operating in 1973 and will be shut down later in 2009, has experienced numerous sodium leaks and fires and a series of potentially serious reactivity incidents. The lifetime load factor of ap-proximately 45% is one of the lowest in the world. France's program to produce and separate plutonium started right after the Second World War. While the initial purpose was to obtain plutonium for the nuclear weapons program, very early on, the fast breeder reactor became a second strategic goal. European cooperation was another goal and the EURO-CHEMIC consortium was created in 1957 with the participation of 10 countries of which France and Germany held the largest shares with 17% each. 1 The first reprocessing plant, the "plutonium factory" (usine de plutonium) UP1 was started up in Marcoule in 1958 and the first proposal for the experi-mental fast reactor Rapsodie was drawn up that year. Preliminary studies for a 1000-MWe reactor were carried out as early as 1964. Materials were tested for their behavior under neutron irradiation in Har-monie starting in 1965 and breeder core configuration issues in the critical facility, Masurca, starting in 1966.
The last two decades have seen a remarkable growth in the number of cooperative agreements among large, multinational enterprises (MNE). Why, and under what conditions, would these vertically and horizontally integrated organizations choose to give up a part of what has often been cited as their main raison d’être, i.e., secure control over firm-specific technical and market information, in favor of sharing such information with rivals?
This book is an interpretation of how the nuclear dream which emerged at the end of World War II and seemed to be on the verge of realization in the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC embargo dissolved during the ensuing four years. The central argument is that the origin of this disappointment can be found in circumstances that span the preceding 25-odd year period. Much of the first third of the book reviews events and developments of the 1950s and 1960s to answer the question of how American light water reactor technology overwhelmed the Western world market for nuclear power plants. The authors believe that the answer to this question contains the key to understanding the real condition of nuclear power today. To compress their argument into its most concise form: the way that the innovation process for light water reactors was managed by business and government in the US and Western Europe contributed to the identification of nuclear power technology with something that many citizens in these countries dislike and distrust about their societies. Moreover, it is this dislike and distrust which is the driving force behind the nuclear safety controversy and the principal cause for the dissolution of the nuclear dream. The authors conclude that it seems increasingly likely that the US, at least, will have to forego nuclear energy as a major source of power for the remainder of the century.
This paper discusses performance in the French nuclear industry, which is, especially in comparative perspective, a significant success. It emphasizes the interaction and co-evolution of institutions, organizational patterns and the technological regime in the industry. As deregulation in the electricity industry is spreading across the industrialized countries, the success of the French nuclear sector limits the scope for liberalization in France - a situation that is likely to keep France on this technological trajectory for power generation. The paper concludes by assessing the sustainability of the system thus generated.
Nuclear power, perhaps more than any other industrial technology, is a child of state interests. Whether peaceful or war like, use of atomic power has traditionally been identified with the larger imperatives of state security. Furthermore, the exploitation of nuclear power has required the foundation of complex state apparatuses to operate, regulate and justify it. In this paper, the examples of the USA, France and Sweden are used and comparisons made between their different histories of state involvement in nuclear power development. The discussion is shaped by drawing similarities between the behaviour of states and that of characters in the Prometheus myth — gods, Titans and mortals.
We present a reactor-by-reactor analysis of historical busbar costs for 99 nuclear reactors in the United States, and compare those costs with recent projections for next-generation US reactors. We argue that cost projections far different from median historical costs require more justification than estimates that lie close to those medians. Our analysis suggests that some recent projections of capital costs, construction duration, and total operations and maintenance costs are quite low—far enough from the historical medians that additional scrutiny may be required to justify using such estimates in current policy discussions and planning.
This paper presents a new method for modeling-induced technological learning and uncertainty in energy systems. Three related features are introduced simultaneously: (1) increasing returns to scale for the costs of new technologies; (2) clusters of linked technologies that induce learning depending on their technological 'proximity' in addition to the technology relations through the structure (and connections) of the energy system; and (3) uncertain costs of all technologies and energy sources. The energy systems-engineering model MESSAGE developed at IIASA was modified to include these three new features. MESSAGE is a linear programming optimization model.
This article discusses the current efforts to measure disability in a comparable manner internationally, the effects of using different types of wording in questions, and the implications of the approach of asking about 'difficulties' rather than 'disability' on the use of disability statistics.
The study design was qualitative. Twenty-one focus groups were run with adults responding for themselves. Nine groups were classified a priori by the author as 'disabled', six as 'unsure', and the last six as 'non-disabled'. The participants completed a questionnaire using the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) Short Set, the South African Census 2001 question, and the question 'Are you disabled?'. This was followed by group discussion on these questions and on how the concept of disability is understood by group participants.
Participants understand disability as being a permanent, unchangeable state, mostly physical, and where a person is unable to do anything. The participants in the three groups of allocated disability status (disabled, unsure and non-disabled) provided quite different responses on the three questions. All participants in the 'disabled' and 'unsure' groups reported having 'difficulty' on the WG questions, but the 'unsure' groups did not identify as being 'disabled' on either of the two other questions.
Using questions that ask about 'difficulty' rather than 'disability' provides a more comprehensive and inclusive measure of disability with a clearer understanding of what is being measured. Asking about 'difficulty' provides an improved measure of disability status for effective data collection and analysis to promote development, implementation and monitoring of disability-inclusive policies.
Large increases in productivity are typically realized as organizations gain experience in production. These "learning curves"
have been found in many organizations. Organizations vary considerably in the rates at which they learn. Some organizations
show remarkable productivity gains, whereas others show little or no learning. Reasons for the variation observed in organizational
learning curves include organizational "forgetting," employee turnover, transfer of knowledge from other products and other
organizations, and economies of scale.
This paper describes the endogenous technical change module that has been incorporated in POLES and the main quantitative results of the new version of the model and corresponding exercises. Section 2 presents the methodology that has been used in order to assess the returns to R&D for the main power generation technologies identified in the model. R&D budget allocation is then analysed for the base case in Section 3, which also illustrates the differences in the behaviour, respectively of the least and most risk-averse agents. Section 4, analyses in detail the changes in budget allocation that are induced by the introduction of CO 2 emission constraints to 2030, as well as their impacts on marginal and total abatement costs for the main world regions. As a last step, the consequences of changes in public R&D are examined in Section 5. This exercise shows that the performance and diffusion of the technologies benefiting from the shift in public R&D are largely improved, in spite of noticeable "crowding out" effects - of private research by public research - for these technologies.
"Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street," observed legendary speculator Jesse Livermore. History tells us that periods of major technological innovation are typically accompanied by speculative bubbles as economic agents overreact to genuine advancements in productivity. Excessive run-ups in asset prices can have important consequences for the economy as firms and investors respond to the price signals, resulting in capital misallocation. On the one hand, speculation can magnify the volatility of economic and financial variables, thus harming the welfare of those who are averse to uncertainty and fluctuations. But on the other hand, speculation can increase investment in risky ventures, thus yielding benefits to a society that suffers from an underinvestment problem.
A number of factors, including design variation and the combination of uncertain costs and cost-plus contracting, diminished opportunities and incentives to improve power plant design and construction over the last several decades. This paper incorporates these factors into a model of learning that relies on a principal-agent framework. The author finds that, because of design variation, learning was reduced when an agent contracted with a series of different principals; agent learning declined when cost uncertainty increased during the late 1970s and 1980s; and, at the same time, the locus of learning may have shifted from agents to principals. Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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