{"title":"核电厂退役成本估算中的突发事件","authors":"Geoffrey Rothwell","doi":"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108721","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Hundreds of estimates have been made of decommissioning costs for commercial nuclear power plants. There is no standard method for making these estimates, particularly for estimating contingency, a type of risk premium, to cover unexpected costs during project execution. Following cost engineering guidelines for estimating contingency requires, among other project characteristics, consideration of (1) the cost estimate's probability distribution, (2) the cost estimate's variance, (3) the estimator's assumed accuracy range that will contain the final cost, (4) the estimator's level of confidence that the final cost will be in the stated accuracy range, and (5) the cost estimate user's risk aversion. The variance (or standard deviation) can be calculated using Monte Carlo techniques, which generally assume no correlation between individual activity costs. Because of portfolio effects, the simulated standard deviation of the aggregated activity cost is smaller than what would be suggested by nuclear decommissioning cost estimating guidelines. The simulated standard deviation is more reasonable when correlations are assumed to be non-zero between activities. This conclusion is shown by applying the proposed method for estimating contingency to activity costs estimated by the decommissioning operations contractor Energy<ce:italic>Solutions</ce:italic> to decommission the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, while it is decommissioning four other US nuclear power units after it completed the decontamination and demolition of four other units, including Zion 1&2. Energy<ce:italic>Solutions</ce:italic> could be approaching Nth-of-a-Kind decommissioning costs for US nuclear power plants.","PeriodicalId":11665,"journal":{"name":"Energy Economics","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":13.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Contingency in nuclear power plant decommissioning cost estimation\",\"authors\":\"Geoffrey Rothwell\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108721\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Hundreds of estimates have been made of decommissioning costs for commercial nuclear power plants. There is no standard method for making these estimates, particularly for estimating contingency, a type of risk premium, to cover unexpected costs during project execution. Following cost engineering guidelines for estimating contingency requires, among other project characteristics, consideration of (1) the cost estimate's probability distribution, (2) the cost estimate's variance, (3) the estimator's assumed accuracy range that will contain the final cost, (4) the estimator's level of confidence that the final cost will be in the stated accuracy range, and (5) the cost estimate user's risk aversion. The variance (or standard deviation) can be calculated using Monte Carlo techniques, which generally assume no correlation between individual activity costs. Because of portfolio effects, the simulated standard deviation of the aggregated activity cost is smaller than what would be suggested by nuclear decommissioning cost estimating guidelines. The simulated standard deviation is more reasonable when correlations are assumed to be non-zero between activities. This conclusion is shown by applying the proposed method for estimating contingency to activity costs estimated by the decommissioning operations contractor Energy<ce:italic>Solutions</ce:italic> to decommission the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, while it is decommissioning four other US nuclear power units after it completed the decontamination and demolition of four other units, including Zion 1&2. Energy<ce:italic>Solutions</ce:italic> could be approaching Nth-of-a-Kind decommissioning costs for US nuclear power plants.\",\"PeriodicalId\":11665,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Energy Economics\",\"volume\":\"9 1\",\"pages\":\"\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":13.6000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-07-17\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Energy Economics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"96\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108721\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"经济学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"ECONOMICS\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Energy Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108721","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
Contingency in nuclear power plant decommissioning cost estimation
Hundreds of estimates have been made of decommissioning costs for commercial nuclear power plants. There is no standard method for making these estimates, particularly for estimating contingency, a type of risk premium, to cover unexpected costs during project execution. Following cost engineering guidelines for estimating contingency requires, among other project characteristics, consideration of (1) the cost estimate's probability distribution, (2) the cost estimate's variance, (3) the estimator's assumed accuracy range that will contain the final cost, (4) the estimator's level of confidence that the final cost will be in the stated accuracy range, and (5) the cost estimate user's risk aversion. The variance (or standard deviation) can be calculated using Monte Carlo techniques, which generally assume no correlation between individual activity costs. Because of portfolio effects, the simulated standard deviation of the aggregated activity cost is smaller than what would be suggested by nuclear decommissioning cost estimating guidelines. The simulated standard deviation is more reasonable when correlations are assumed to be non-zero between activities. This conclusion is shown by applying the proposed method for estimating contingency to activity costs estimated by the decommissioning operations contractor EnergySolutions to decommission the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, while it is decommissioning four other US nuclear power units after it completed the decontamination and demolition of four other units, including Zion 1&2. EnergySolutions could be approaching Nth-of-a-Kind decommissioning costs for US nuclear power plants.
期刊介绍:
Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.