An Integrated Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach for Evaluating Nuclear Fuel Cycle Systems for Long-term Sustainability on the Basis of an Equilibrium Model: Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation, and Multiattribute Utility Theory Combined with Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The focus on the issues surrounding spent nuclear fuel and lifetime extension of old nuclear power plants continues to grow nowadays. A transparent decision-making process to identify the best suitable nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) is considered to be the key task in the current situation. Through this study, an attempt is made to develop an equilibrium model for the NFC to calculate the material flows based on 1 TWh of electricity production, and to perform integrated multicriteria decision-making method analyses via the analytic hierarchy process technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation, and multiattribute utility theory methods. This comparative study is aimed at screening and ranking the three selected NFC options against five aspects: sustainability, environmental friendliness, economics, proliferation resistance, and technical feasibility. The selected fuel cycle options include pressurized water reactor (PWR) once-through cycle, PWR mixed oxide cycle, or pyroprocessing sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle. A sensitivity analysis was performed to prove the robustness of the results and explore the influence of criteria on the obtained ranking. As a result of the comparative analysis, the pyroprocessing sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle is determined to be the most competitive option among the NFC scenarios.