Nuclear Decommissioning Profile Sweden

This report provides an overview of the legal framework and regulation for the decommissioning of NPPs in Sweden, as well as give an indication on current cost estimates and their accuracy. Additionally, it shows the current progress of the decommissioning process

Nuclear Decommissioning Profile Switzerland

This report provides an overview of the legal framework and regulation for the decommissioning of NPPs in Switzerland, as well as give an indication on current cost estimates and their accuracy. Additionally, it shows the current progress of the decommissioning process

Environmental policy after Brexit : how does the introduction of a fossil-energy tax affect the british economy?

As the United Kingdom (UK) is set to leave the European Union (EU) in 2019, it faces large uncertainties especially with respect to international policy such as climate policies. The UK still has to meet previously agreed upon climate targets but it now has the possibility to abolish EU climate policies and implement different strategies on a national level. These chosen national strategies could be more beneficial to the UK as they are set according to its country-specific characteristics. A proposed strategy is the introduction of a carbon tax on energy sectors. Thus, this study analyses the effect of an ad valorem uniform fossil-energy tax on British energy sectors using a computable general equilibrium model. The envisioned tax is applied at two different levels: production and consumption. The differentiation of a tax according to channels allows to determine where an implementation of the tax would be least distortive to the economy and induce smaller welfare losses. The results found in the analysis confirm the hypothesis by the literature that a tax on producers leads to larger sectoral contractions in total and a larger decrease in welfare. Based on the outcomes, rough policy recommendations can be made. If the British government wants to support the production of green energy it should tax consumers rather than producers as producers might switch to cheaper inputs (i.efossilfuels)if production costs increase through the introduction of a tax. Moreover, if the British government is interested in preventing welfare losses in form of negative % changes in value of GDP it should implement the tax on a consumer level as well

An Ex-Ante Method to Verify Commercial U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning Cost Estimates

There are billions of dollars at stake in the US nuclear power plant decommissioning market. Approximately 100 nuclear power plants are still operating but will come offline and need to be decommissioned over the next few decades. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) mandates that the operators of these plants set money aside in segregated funds to finance decommissioning work. However, it is hard for external stakeholders to verify the cost estimations, which ultimately determine how much operators are required to save. In this paper, we develop a method to validate the existing cost models and calculate a contingency empirically for these models. We extend Reference Class Forecasting methods using adaptive kernel fitting and the Wilks' formula. Based on this method, and assuming a social tolerance for potential cost overruns of 20%, we calculate a new contingency of 48% of the estimated radiological decommissioning cost. After a "stress test" of the current decommissioning trust funds of operating reactor sites, we find that 48% of reactors we considered have sufficient funding-in many cases substantially more than required-and could therefore finance the potential scale of overrun. However, we find that 28 plants (52%) would fall short on average $211 million. Still, overruns at every plant are not a foregone conclusion because-while overruns are probable, based on past experience-the actual scale and frequency is not known. Nevertheless, our results add further evidence to the mounting call for the NRC to revise its cost models in light of new information

Deriving a benefit transfer function for threatened and endangered species in interaction with their level of charisma

Biodiversity and species conservation are among the most urgent global issues. Both are under serious threat because of human intrusion and as a result, it is likely that present and future projects will affect threatened and endangered species. Thus, it is important to account for these impacts when evaluating and conducting cost and benefit analyses of projects. Due to their public good character and non-tradability, the total economic value of threatened and endangered species cannot be reflected by a market price and therefore, alternative approaches (stated preference method) are needed to determine their monetary value. This paper reviews and compares the valuation literature on threatened and endangered animals and conducts a meta-analysis regression to identify explanatory variables for the variation in willingness to pay for threatened and endangered species. The main findings of the meta-analysis show that the interaction of the level of threat and charisma have a positive effect on willingness to pay. Furthermore, developed countries have a higher willingness to pay compared to developing countries. Similarly, visitors of conservation sites have higher willingness to pay than residents. The provided example of a benefit transfer of the estimated function shows the practicability of our results

Cross-Country Survey on the Decommissioning of Commercial Nuclear Reactors: Status, Insights and Knowledge Gaps

In this survey paper, we bring together the insights from six country case studies on decommissioning commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs). Nuclear decommissioning has often been overlooked in past literature but will gain relevance in future research as more and more NPPs reach the ends of their respective lifetimes. The six countries we selected for our research have commercial nuclear industries that span a wide spectrum in terms of organization, regulation, financial provisions, and production of decommissioning services. Based on the cross comparison of countries and their approaches to decommissioning, we highlight a series of gaps in the existing research that we and other researchers should fill in order to derive best practices for the commercial decommissioning industry

How choice complexity in liberalized markets hurts the demand for green electricity

Many countries have liberalized their residential electricity markets or are considering to do so. Liberalization provides consumers with more freedom of choice but also leads to higher choice complexity as consumers face a much larger number of different electricity contracts to choose from. We hypothesize that consumers react to this increased choice complexity in liberalized markets by applying simplified decision strategies that allow them to reduce cognitive effort. In particular, we predict that with increasing size of choice sets, consumers focus more on simple price attributes of electricity contracts and less on the relatively complex environmental attributes, leading to a decrease in the demand for green electricity. In two online experiments conducted in a representative (n=610) and a student sample (n=1,212) in Switzerland, we find that indeed when faced with a larger choice set participants focus more on prices and choose cheaper electricity contracts containing less renewable and more conventional energy than when faced with a smaller choice set. In addition, we also find evidence that a tax on conventional energy is a more effective policy instrument for shifting demand towards renewables than behavioral instruments in the form of social norm interventions. Our results suggest that a liberalization of the household electricity market has to be carefully managed such that consumers are not overwhelmed and do not shift their demand to cheaper but less environmentally-friendly energy sources

The behavioral effects of carbon taxes : experimental evidence

Carbon taxes are a prominent policy instrument for decreasing the consumption of CO2-intensive goods in order to reduce the negative external effects involved in the production or consumption of such goods. A tax leads to higher consumer prices, which typically lowers consumption. In this paper we provide evidence from laboratory experiments showing that for directly lowering consumption, carbon taxes may be less effective than assumed because of unintended behavioral effects. Especially earmarking the revenues of a carbon tax for environmental purposes---a practice that is popular with voters and policy makers---can crowd out consumers' intrinsic motivation to avoid negative externalities. If this is the case, a carbon tax not only increases consumer prices but also raises consumers' willingness to pay for the taxed good, thus partly offsetting the price effect and lowering the consumption-reducing effect of the tax

Deriving a Benefit Transfer Function for Threatened and Endangered Species in Interaction with Their Level of Charisma

Biodiversity and species conservation are among the most urgent global issues. Both are under serious threat because of human intrusion and as a result, it is likely that present and future projects will affect threatened and endangered species. Thus, it is important to account for these impacts when evaluating and conducting cost and benefit analyses of projects. Due to their public good character and non-tradability, the total economic value of threatened and endangered species cannot be reflected by a market price and therefore, alternative approaches (stated preference method) are needed to determine their monetary value. This paper reviews and compares the valuation literature on threatened and endangered animals and conducts a meta-analysis regression to identify explanatory variables for the variation in willingness to pay for threatened and endangered species. The main findings of the meta-analysis show that the interaction of the level of threat and charisma have a positive effect on willingness to pay. Furthermore, developed countries have a higher willingness to pay compared to developing countries. Similarly, visitors of conservation sites have higher willingness to pay than residents. The provided example of a benefit transfer of the estimated function shows the practicability of our results