This analysis investigates the conditions under which nuclear power could play a role in future markets. This study uses EPRI’s U.S. Regional Economy, Greenhouse Gas, and Energy (US-REGEN) energy-economic model to explore tradeoffs across assumptions about technologies, markets, and policies.
Model results suggest that advanced nuclear could be economically competitive across a range of scenarios and that several key drivers may influence deployment:
- Energy and environmental policies. Policy and market environments (for example, emissions pricing) may drive nuclear deployment as much as cost targets.
- Revenue streams. The extent of advanced nuclear deployment depends jointly on changes in costs and market value of different technologies.
- Regional factors. Key regional differences (for example, gas pipelines, policies, existing asset mixes, and transmission) make the economic competitiveness of advanced nuclear vary across the country.
- Capital costs. Capital cost “sweet spots” for new nuclear investments depend critically on the costs of other technologies and on markets (such as gas prices).
Market opportunities hinge on a combination of these factors, which impact the competitiveness of nuclear relative to other electric sector resources and require modeling to evaluate.
Extensive deployment of advanced nuclear would likely require new policies, innovation in technologies to significantly lower costs, and/or innovation in business models and markets to enable supplemental revenue streams. With policies targeting emissions reductions, the presence of technologies such as advanced nuclear can reduce compliance costs. However, simultaneous cost reductions for other generation options—especially dispatchable low-carbon technologies—create additional economic competition for nuclear deployment.
Authors John Bistline