ECONOMICS OF FBR FUEL CYCLE S.Govindarajan Core Engineering and Component Handling Division,

Fuel cycle cost of a fast reactor is expected to play an important role of compensating for higher capital cost of a Fast Reactor and keeping the unit energy cost competitive. PFBR fuel cycle cost has been worked out by a committee constituted for the purpose. The cost has been worked out for a peak fuel burn-up of 1,00,000 MWd/t. The basic components of the PFBR fuel cycle are fabrication cost, storage cost, reprocessing cost and waste management cost. Plutonium and depleted uranium are assumed to be available free of cost. Transport cost has been neglected since the entire fuel cycle facility is co-located at reactor site. Waste management cost till interim storage is accounted. The fuel cycle cost is estimated as 94 paise /kWh at 2009 prices. This cost constitutes roughly 25% of the unit energy cost. Measures to reduce the fuel cycle cost are discussed in the paper. These include integrating all fuel cycle facilities to effect savings in capital as well as revenue expenditures and increasing fuel burn-up. Costs that have not been considered are decommissioning costs of the fuel cycle facilities and cost of deep geological waste repository. It is suggested that the waste disposal costs should be borne by all nuclear power plants by levying a few paise for every unit of nuclear electricity generated.