Metal And Concrete Inputs For Several Nuclear Power Plants

In nuclear energy systems, the major construction inputs are steel and concrete, which comprise over 95% of the material energy inputs. The evaluation of construction material inputs is central to life-cycle assessments for environmental impacts for nuclear and other non-fossil energy systems, and can provide a useful, if only qualitative, plausibility check for economics claims. This paper compares steel and concrete inputs for several nuclear power plants: systems are based on available arrangement drawings, and on scaling laws, and thus are approximate. However, they show that the evolutionary Generation III plants—EPR and ABWR—use approximately 25% more steel and 70% more concrete than 1970's LWRs. This may explain, in part, the relatively large capital costs that have been observed for these plants. In contrast, the passive Generation III+ LWRs that have been selected for new construction in the United States by Nustart—ESBWR and AP-1000—achieve substantial reductions in steel and concrete inputs. For example, analysis presented here suggests that the ESBWR uses 73% of the steel, and 50% of the concrete required to construct an ABWR. This suggests that new Generation III+ nuclear power construction in the U.S. will have substantially lower capital costs than was found with Generation III LWRs. This study also shows that the advanced gas-Brayton cycle technology that will be demonstrated by the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) has the potential to achieve comparable material inputs to LWRs at much smaller unit capacities, and when extrapolated to larger reactors, to further reductions in steel and concrete inputs.