PLENTIFUL ENERGY

cost component can be treated as expense. The costs for control rods and shield
assemblies are not included here as part of the fuel cycle cost, because they are
included in the reactor plant‘s operating and maintenance cost. With the initial
setup costs put aside, the hardware expenses are estimated to be $6 million per year.
The IFR fuel cycle cost is then summarized in Table 13-9. We assumed the
disposal fee would be half of the LWR direct disposal fee of 1 mill/kWh because of
the major reduction in the radiological lifetime.
Table 13-9. IFR Fuel Cycle Cost Components
$million/GWe-yr
mill/kWh
Capital fixed charges 15 1.90
Operating and maintenance 10 1.27
Process consumables, etc. 6 0.76
Disposal fee 4 0.50
Total 35 4.43
Once an IFR starts up, with an initial fissile inventory, the reactor will be selfsustaining
in fissile fuel, and hence will not be subject to any cost escalation due to
scarcity of fuel over its lifetime (there is sufficient fertile material available for
many centuries of operations). In contrast, the LWR fuel cycle cost is subject to
escalation depending on the uranium resource or enrichment costs, as illustrated in
Figure 13-6. As such, the uncertainty band for the IFR fuel cycle cost is assumed to
be 50% of the reference case.
Just as imported LNG plays a backstop role on the natural gas price, IFRs can
backstop uranium price escalation. If we take $50/lb for U 3 O 8 and $100/SWU, the
fissile value in the low-enriched uranium used in LWRs is equivalent to about
$40/gm-U235. In comparison, the recovery cost of bred plutonium in the fast
reactor blanket is on the order of $15/gm-fissile, assuming a marginal cost for
blanket processing of $300/kg and a 2% plutonium buildup in the blanket, both
numbers reasonable today. With fast reactors deployed on an economically
competitive basis for electricity generation, fissile material production is a
byproduct. In essence, the use of fast reactors is equivalent to adding at least a
hundredfold uranium resource base at the current uranium price. The fissile value of
enriched uranium as a function of the uranium ore price is plotted in Figure 13-7
and compared with the cost of plutonium recovery as a byproduct in fast reactors
over a wide range in incremental blanket processing costs. (The one-for-one
substitution of plutonium for U-235 will be less valuable in the LWR and more
valuable in the fast reactor because of their physics characteristics, but the general
point of backstopping uranium cost is accurate.)
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