| Since the introduction of commercial nuclear power in 1957, spent reactor cores have been accumulating in utility water pits awaiting a national decision on fuel recycle. These cores contain reuseable fissile fuel produced as a co-product with energy. Given a positive decision on recycle, the utilities and goverment must address a pricing decision on the spent cores. One approach would be a logical allocation of joint costs between electricity and fissile fuel production, but because of government involvement a broader viewpoint may be in order.;This effort shows that models can be developed that give price policy guidance based on assumptions concerning system production and allocation. The system models indicate that allocation of internal production costs appears to be irrelevant to the determination of recycle fuel prices. Rather, pricing policy should be based on external factors, i.e., the relative costs of fuel reprocessing and production of virgin fuel. Under such a policy, the price of electricity is independent of recycle price but depends on the proportions of recycle and virgin fuels in the system. An important consequence of the model indicated policy is that utilities and regulatory bodies must expand their cost gathering efforts to the entire fuel cycle not limit them to reactor operations.;This study explores recycle fuel pricing policy based on social and utility concerns with a system model and a methodology appropriate for the nuclear energy cycle. Included is the use of process analysis modeling, classical economic production theory and the techniques of dynamic programming to develop transfer price models for aggregate nuclear systems. The system models assume joint output of energy and fissile fuel in a mature industry using a traditional Cobb-Douglas economic approach, and alternatively, process analysis modeling based on reactor design parameters. |
