• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.45 no.6
• /
• pp.701-706
• /
• 2013

According to the OECD/NEA estimates, nuclear power plants (NPPs), whether with a large reactor or with small modular reactors (SMRs), are competitive with many other electricity generation technologies in a significant number of cases, one of the exceptions being natural gas in the USA with the current level of prices. However, SMRs have particular features and requirements setting conditions for their deployment. This paper presents the preliminary analysis by OECD/NEA of the economics, opportunities, and market for small nuclear reactors.

• Korean System Dynamics Review
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.57-80
• /
• 2006

Nuclear technology made a great contribution to the national economy and society by localization of nuclear power plant design, and by stabilization of electricity price, etc. It is very important to conduct the retrospective analysis for the nuclear technology contribution to the national economy and society, but it is more important to conduct prospective analysis for the nuclear technology contribution. The term "technology value" is often used in the prospective analysis to value the result of technology development. There are various definitions of technology value, but generally it means the increment of future revenue or the reduction of future cost by technology development. These technology valuation methods are widely used in various fields (information technology or energy technology, etc). The main objective of this research is to develop valuation methodology that represents unique characteristics of nuclear power technology. The valuation methodology that incorporates market share changes of generation technologies was developed. The technology valuation model which consists of five modules (electricity demand forecast module, technology development module, market share module, electricity generation module, total cost module) to incorporate market share changes of generation technologies was developed. The nuclear power technology value assessed by this technology valuation model was 3 times more than the value assessed by the conventional method. So it was confirmed that it is very important to incorporates market share changes of generation technologies. The valuation results of nuclear power technology in this study can be used as policy data for ensuring the benefits of nuclear power R&D (Research and Development) investment.

• Plant Journal
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.66-73
• /
• 2009

This study aims to develop a strategy for South Korean companies to penetrate into the global NPP(nuclear power plant) market with their strength as the sixth biggest nuclear power generator in the world. With 20 nuclear plants in commercial operation and 6 more in construction, South Korea has the best technology in construction and operation of NPP. Despite these capabilities as demonstrated on its domestic market, Korean companies' constraint to enter and play a key role in global NPP market would be the lack of experience in overseas NPP projects, original technologies, and diplomatic effectiveness. This study analyzes the competitiveness of Korean standardized nuclear power plant, construction management skills, construction technologies, manufacturing equipment and materials and operation skills. In this research the current status of existing NPP and the forecast of building NPP according to countries was analyzed in order to work out strategies with technology, cost-effectiveness, and diplomatic consideration.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.133-141
• /
• 2016

Although construction of any new nuclear power projects had not been launched since mid-1970s until recently in the USA, many new nuclear power plants have been constructed in many countries with the support of their governments mainly as part of their national energy security and electric source diversification policies. For many reasons, the nuclear power industry seemed to reclaim their renaissance from the beginning of this century and the investment in the nuclear power projects draw positive concern from the private financial sector. But the global financial crisis in 2008 and subsequent economic slow-down together with tighter bank credit regulations caused commercial banks, the main source of financing, to lose appetite for investing in new nuclear power projects. But the nuclear power economics shows that the nuclear power is viable in terms of the environmental benefit and long-term average cost compared to other power generation sources. Also doubt about nuclear power safety was much mitigated due to technology development and reinforced safety-related tests and monitoring. Therefore, the prospect for nuclear power market expansion remains positive although there are comparatively big differences among different scenarios. After Korea Electric Power Corp. won the UAE nuclear power project in December of 2009, the competition in nuclear power markets is undergoing huge changes. Competitors backed by the support of their own governments are now entering the market with many aggressive and innovative financing packages to win bids of new nuclear power projects. This report analyzed the nuclear power market prospects, competitive edges of nuclear power, risk management measures, and financing challenges and recommends alternative solutions to promote competitive edges in winning bids of new nuclear power projects.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.90-97
• /
• 2006

Hydrogen is used as a chemical feedstock in several important industrial processes, including oil refineries and petro-chemical production. But, nowadays hydrogen is focused as energy carrier on the rising of problems such as exhaustion of fossil fuel and environmental pollution. Thermochemical hydrogen production by nuclear energy has potential to efficiently produce large quantities of hydrogen without producing greenhouse gases, and research of nuclear hydrogen, therefore, has been worked with goal to demonstrate commercial production in 2020. The oil refineries and petro-chemical plant are very large, centralized producers and users of industrial hydrogen, and high-potential early market for hydrogen produced by nuclear energy. Therefore, it is essential to investigate and analyze for state of domestic hydrogen market focused on industrial users. Hydrogen market of petro-chemical industry as demand site was investigated and worked for demand forecast of hydrogen in 2020. Also we suggested possible supply plans of nuclear hydrogen considered regional characteristics and then it can be provided basis for determination of optimal capacity of nuclear hydrogen plant in 2020.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2001.05a
• /
• pp.523.2-523
• /
• 2001

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.31-42
• /
• 2007

Energy supply is increasingly showing up as a major issue for electricity supply, transportation, settlement, and process heat industrial supply including hydrogen production. Nuclear power is part of the solution. For electricity supply, as exemplified in Finland and France, the EPR brings an immediate answer; HTR could bring another solution in some specific cases. For other supply, mostly heat, the HTR brings a solution inaccessible to conventional nuclear power plants for very high or even high temperature. As fossil fuels costs increase and efforts to avoid generation of Greenhouse gases are implemented, a market for nuclear generated process heat will be developed. Following active developments in the 80's, HTR have been put on the back burner up to 5 years ago. Light water reactors are widely dominating the nuclear production field today. However, interest in the HTR technology was renewed in the past few years. Several commercial projects are actively promoted, most of them aiming at electricity production. ANTARES is today AREVA's response to the cogeneration market. It distinguishes itself from other concepts with its indirect cycle design powering a combined cycle power plant. Several reasons support this design choice, one of the most important of which is the design flexibility to adapt readily to combined heat and power applications. From the start, AREVA made the choice of such flexibility with the belief that the HTR market is not so much in competition with LWR in the sole electricity market but in the specific added value market of cogeneration and process heat. In view of the volatility of the costs of fossil fuels, AREVA's choice brings to the large industrial heat applications the fuel cost predictability of nuclear fuel with the efficiency of a high temperature heat source tree of Greenhouse gases emissions. The ANTARES module produces 600 MWth which can be split into the required process heat, the remaining power drives an adapted prorated electric plant. Depending on the process heat temperature and power needs, up to 80% of the nuclear heat is converted into useful power. An important feature of the design is the standardization of the heat source, as independent as possible of the process heat application. This should expedite licensing. The essential conditions for success include: ${\bullet}$ Timely adapted licensing process and regulations, codes and standards for such application and design ${\bullet}$ An industry oriented R&D program to meet the technological challenges making the best use of the international collaboration. Gen IV could be the vector ${\bullet}$ Identification of an end user(or a consortium of) willing to fund a FOAK

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2001.05a
• /
• pp.535-535
• /
• 2001

• Korean System Dynamics Review
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.25-40
• /
• 2001

This paper describes the forecast of power plant construction in a competitive korean electricity market. In Korea, KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation, fully controlled by government) was responsible for from the production of the electricity to the sale of electricity to customer. However, the generation part is separated from KEPCO and six generation companies were established for whole sale competition from April 1st, 2001. The generation companies consist of five fossil power companies and one nuclear power company in Korea at present time. Fossil power companies are scheduled to be sold to private companies including foreign investors. Nuclear power company is owned and controlled by government. The competition in generation market will start from 2003. ISO (Independence System Operator will purchase the electricity from the power exchange market. The market price is determined by the SMP(System Marginal Price) which is decided by the balance between demand and supply of electricity in power exchange market. Under this uncertain circumstance, the energy policy planners such as government are interested to the construction of the power plant in the future. These interests are accelerated due to the recent shortage of electricity supply in California. In the competitive market, investors are no longer interested in the investment for the capital intensive, long lead time generating technologies such as nuclear and coal plants. Large unclear and coal plants were no longer the top choices. Instead, investors in the competitive market are interested in smaller, more efficient, cheaper, cleaner technologies such as CCGT(Combined Cycle Gas Turbine). Electricity is treated as commodity in the competitive market. The investors behavior in the commodity market shows that the new investment decision is made when the market price exceeds the sum of capital cost and variable cost of the new facility and the existing facility utilization depends on the marginal cost of the facility. This investors behavior can be applied to the new investments for the power plant. Under these postulations, there is the potential for power plant construction to appear in waves causing alternating periods of over and under supply of electricity like commodity production or real estate production. A computer model was developed to sturdy the possibility that construction will appear in waves of boom and bust in Korean electricity market. This model was constructed using System Dynamics method pioneered by Forrester(MIT, 1961) and explained in recent text by Sternman (Business Dynamics, MIT, 2000) and the recent work by Andrew Ford(Energy Policy, 1999). This model was designed based on the Energy Policy results(Ford, 1999) with parameters for loads and resources in Korea. This Korea Market Model was developed and tested in a small scale project to demonstrate the usefulness of the System Dynamics approach. Korea electricity market is isolated and not allowed to import electricity from outsides. In this model, the base load such as unclear and large coal power plant are assumed to be user specified investment and only CCGT is selected for new investment by investors in the market. This model may be used to learn if government investment in new unclear plants could compensate for the unstable actions of private developers. This model can be used to test the policy focused on the role of unclear investments over time. This model also can be used to test whether the future power plant construction can meet the government targets for the mix of generating resources and to test whether to maintain stable price in the spot market.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2012.11a
• /
• pp.233-235
• /
• 2012

Continually having growed up overseas construction market for new Nuclear Power Plant(NPP), the exports of Korean Reactor emerges as the key task of National Nuclear Business. The objective of this study is to strengthen the competitiveness of Korean Reactor through the improvement of Construction Project Contract & Delivery System for NPP. This study suggests the method for increasing Korean Reactor's competitiveness of exports by analyzing the business environment of foreign market and comparing Contract & Delivery System between domestic and foreign.