A METHOD FOR STUDY OF NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE SCENARIOS WITH AN INTENSIVE ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION DECLINE IN A SHORT PERIOD

Abstract

Nuclear fuel cycle scenario study can be of benefit for decision-making in nuclear industry development. However, due to the lack of knowledge about the future, many scenario studies are subject to uncertainties. As a result, some parameters may be disrupted. Energy production of an entire nuclear fleet of interest is such a parameter. Its disruptive decline has a strong impact on the results of scenario studies. Resilience study against disruption of decline in energy production is required to anticipate possible failures of scenario studies. In such a resilience study, a large number of scenario trajectory simulations with different modes of decline are expected. It is too difficult to set the values of all scenario parameters in each trajectory manually. As a solution, a method is proposed in this paper to reduce the number of input parameters. A set of rules has been implemented as an intermediate layer between the decision-makers and the scenario code to drive the evolution of a nuclear fleet. In this case, a trajectory can be fully characterized by a few parameters. This method has been applied to a simplified academic nuclear fleet with two different modes of decline in energy production. The simulation results showed that the developed method is feasible. One should note that the scenario model in this paper is only used for academic purposes and does not correspond to any industrial strategy or policy.

Keywords

• nuclear fuel cycle scenario
• electricity production decline
• nuclear fleet evolution