Uranium demand and economic analysis of different nuclear fuel cycles in China

• The natural uranium demand by 2014 for China's nuclear power plants are calculated.
• Using LCOE calculate the costs of different nuclear fuel cycle route in China.
• The price of uranium, enrichment and reprocessing affects the final cost primarily.
• Uncertainty analysis further shows that the cost of OTC is more stable than PRR.
• A suitable nuclear fuel cycle route and cycle policy in future China is given.

The demand of natural uranium of two different cycle options of China's PWRs were calculated in this paper, the once-through cycle route (OTC) is 197.2 t/8.702 TWh and the partial recycling in PWR route (PRR) is 131.0 t/8.702 TWh. The fuel cycle component (LCOETotal fuel cycle) of the levelised cost electricity (LCOE) for NPPS under different capacity, different cycle routes and different discount rate was calculated. In addition, the sensitivity analysis was made to identify the most influential parameters in the final price. Also, the breakeven price of uranium was calculated to be 130 $/kgU (59 $/lb) for PRR fuel cycle with a fleet generating 100 TWh/year at 4% discount rate and 74 $/kgU (34 $/lb) at 2% discount rate with reference to the OTC option. Then, the uncertainty analysis was made by EXCEL&Crystal software.