In view of the negligible contribution of decommissioning costs to LUEC [7.1] (see the discussion in section 6.4), the decommissioning costs were set to zero for all SMR plant configurations estimated in this section.

7.1.3 LUEC estimate

First, the investment component of LUEC for SMR plant configurations was estimated. The calculations were performed2 using formula (6.2) given in Section 6.2.

Next, all LUEC components given in Table A3.6 and Table A3.5 in Appendix 3 were summed yielding the final LUEC estimate in USD/MWh, shown in Table 7.3.

* for 5 % discount rate, USD per kWe. ** at 5% discount rate, USD per MWh.

Investment cost*

Investment O&M + fuel component of component of LUEC** LUEC** LUEC**

Table 7.4. LUEC estimates for the various SMR plant configurations (10% discount rate)

PWR-90(2) single module plant

90 60/90% 6 150 71 18.3 89 PWR-125 five 625 60/90% 8 085- 8 851 94-102 22.2 116-125 module plant к ‘

The data from Table 7.5 leads to the following observations:

• The estimates of LUEC are higher than the designers’ data for all plant configurations with PWRs based on the Russian marine derivative designs (by 60-70%, and for the PWR-35 by 100-130%).

• The estimates of LUEC are overlapping the designers’ data for the PWR-125 multi-module plant based on the US mPower design.

• The estimates of LUEC are slightly lower than the designers’ data for the integral type PWR based on the Korean design SMR (by 10%).

• LUEC estimates for the PWR-90 obtained with the two different Korean NPPs with large reactors used as reference are nearly equal.

Assuming that some SMR designers may explicitly include the heat credit in the LUEC values specified for their designs, an evaluation of the possible impact of such an inclusion was performed. The heat credit values for several SMRs were taken from Table 6.12. The ratios of the independent LUEC estimates and the designers’ data on LUEC for the corresponding SMRs from Table 7.5 were then adjusted taking into account the heat credit values, with the results shown in Table 7.6.

Plant configuration	Total electric output of the plant (net) MWe	SMR of relevance	LUEC estimate/Designers’ LUEC Table 7.5, without heat credit	Heat credit Table 6.12	Ratio LUEC estimate/Designers’ LUEC With heat credit
PWR-8 twin-unit barge-mounted
^0^	15.8	ABV	1.6-1.7	28.3-33.5%*	1.26-1.42

Table 7.6. LUEC estimates for selected SMRs versus the designers’ data at a 5% discount rate (heat credit taken into account)

PWR-35 twin-unit barge-mounted

70

KLT-40S

2-2.3 28.3-33.5% 1.7-1.96

PWR-302 twin — unit land-based	—
	604	VBER-300	1.3-1.4	25-27%	1.03-1.15

PWR-90(2) single module

90 SMART 0.9 21.6% 0.7

* Not available from Table 6.12, considered as equal to PWR-35.

From Table 7.6 one can conclude that:

• With the assumption of a heat credit explicitly included in the LUEC, the LUEC estimates for PWR-90 and PWR-302 show reasonably good agreement with the designers’ data given in Table 4.14. The estimate for PWR-8 is 26-42% higher than the designer’ values.

• No explanation was found for the observed difference between the LUEC estimate for the barge-mounted plants with the two PWR-35 based on the Russian KLT-40S and the designers’ data for this plant. Even with heat credit taken into account the LUEC estimate appears to be 26-96 % higher than the designers’ data.

An important factor affecting the LUEC estimation carried out in this report is parameter n in the scaling law (6.3) discussed in Section 6.2.1. For the estimates presented in Table 7.1 to Table 7.6 of this section the value n = 0.51 was used corresponding to the average[57] from Table 6.6. To evaluate the uncertainty associated with the selection of n, Figure 7.4 graphically represents the difference between the LUEC estimates and the designers’ data on LUEC (maximal values) for different values of the parameter n, ranging from 0.45 to 0.6[58].

Figure 7.4 shows that the LUEC estimates are quite sensitive to the selection of parameter n in the scaling law (6.3) and taking (or not taking) into account the heat credit. If heat credit is not taken into account (where it could apply) the majority (5 out of 8) of the independent LUEC estimates are significantly higher compared to the designers’ data on LUEC. If heat credit is taken into account, the majority (5 out of 8) of the independent LUEC estimates envelope the designers’ data on the LUEC.

The independent LUEC estimates obtained in this section (Table 7.3) are used in Section 7.2 to evaluate the deployment potential of SMRs in a number of electricity and electricity and heat markets around the world.

Figure 7.4. Difference (in %) between estimated LUEC and the designers’ maximal values for LUEC at

different values of n ranging from 0.45 to 0.6.

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