The Energy Technologies Institute’s Nuclear Cost Drivers (ETI NCD) full technical report is the culmination of a project to demonstrate a credible path for nuclear energy to become a competitive Net Zero solution alongside renewable energy.

The summary report ETI NCD project was originally released in April 2018. This was accompanied by a statement on the project outputs including the costs database, cost model, and project reports.

The ETI operated from 2007 to 2019 as a public-private partnership between global energy and engineering companies and the UK Government which worked as a conduit between academia, industry and the UK government to accelerate the development of low carbon technologies.

As part of its nuclear programme between 2013 and 2019, the ETI delivered of a knowledge gathering project led by LucidCatalyst, to provide an evidence-based understanding of the range of factors influencing the cost of energy from new nuclear plants.

One of the ETI’s guiding principles was to allow private sector ETI members to extract value from their investment in ETI whilst publishing the learning from the projects consistent with matched funding investment from the taxpayer through UK Government. Two years on, the time is right to publish the full technical report, which provides more detail on the case studies than the summary report, and much more detail on the range of opportunities with potential to reduce nuclear costs.

NOTE: Apart from the preface, this version of the full project technical report contains no new content. It has been updated with minor editorial amendments to improve flow and brevity for the reader. It was rebranded by the authors at LucidCatalyst for consistency. It has also been checked by Energy Systems Catapult to ensure that these minor updates do not impact on the scope, contents and evidence presentation that were subject to independent review.

Key points

• Eight key drivers were identified with the potential to reduce costs for future new nuclear power projects
• Low carbon, low cost new nuclear energy is achievable in the UK, through a sector-wide, integrated cost reduction programme that builds on global best practices
• An effective cost reduction programme could also reduce the duration and risk of nuclear projects, changing the perception of nuclear construction risk and reducing financial costs.