On the Economic Feasibility of Nuclear Power Generation in Egypt

Egypt is currently planning to introduce nuclear energy for national electricity generation. In this context, this paper provides an economic feasibility assessment of the use of nuclear power to generate electricity in Egypt and identifies the critical factors behind the choice of appropriate nuclear technology. The methodology applied is pure economic analysis of demand and supply elements of Egypt’s electricity sector using elasticity, break-even analysis, sustainability criteria, and factor decomposition. It is derived that nuclear technology is economically feasible to generate a progressive share of future electricity supply to meet increasing electricity demand in Egypt. From an economic perspective, nuclear energy is required to generate 4 percent of countrywide electricity supply by 2017 progressing to 15 percent by 2050. The recommended choice of nuclear plant technology is Light Water Reactor (LWR) or evolutionary LWR. However, such feasibility is conditional on critical factors including capital cost per nuclear plant, nuclear operation costs, price of enriched uranium, nuclear conversion efficiency, nuclear plant lifetime, and nuclear plant capacity.