Estimating the economic cost of setting up a nuclear power plant at Rooppur in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh government is in the final stage of setting up one nuclear power plant with two units at Rooppur, Ishwardi, each having 1200 MW capacity, to be launched in 2023 to meet the energy shortage urgently. The financial cost of the project is the US $12.65 billion. The primary purpose of this paper is to calculate the economic cost of setting up this plant by using the estimation method developed by Du and Parsons (2009), MIT (2003; 2009; 2018), and Singh et al. (2018). It has been found that the economic cost is amounted to 9.36 cents/kWh for the capacity of 2400 MW. In contrast, for a similar plant in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, India, the corresponding cost figure is 5.36 cents/kWh for 2000 MW. Even though it seems costlier than India, the study suggests that policymakers should prefer nuclear power, as it is cost-competitive, considering the production cost of other electricity facilities. The main advantage of nuclear power is cost-competitive baseload power generation with zero carbon emission. This nuclear power plant (NPP) project is expected to boost the energy sector of Bangladesh by transforming the country from an energy deficit country into an energy surplus country.

Keywords: Atomic energy; Bangladesh; Cost–benefit analysis; Discounted present value method; India; Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE); Nuclear energy; Nuclear power; Nuclear power plant; Rooppur.