NES Comparison (ASENES)
The International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) was established in 2000 with the goal of ensuring a sustainable nuclear energy supply to help meet 21st century global energy needs. INPRO’s activities are centred on the key concepts of global nuclear energy sustainability and the development of long-range nuclear energy strategies, so that nuclear energy is and remains available to meet national energy needs in interested IAEA Member States. The INPRO Collaborative Project on Key indicators for innovative nuclear energy systems had the objective to develop guidance and tools for comparative evaluation of the status, prospects, benefits and risks associated with development of innovative nuclear technologies for a more distant future. This article presents selected results of the project illustrating a possible procedure of comparative evaluation of nuclear energy systems and its trial application for the hypothetical nuclear energy systems to demonstrate those judgments aggregation capabilities which may be provided by the multi-criteria decision analysis methods in identification of merits and demerits associated with considered technological options that are required for these options ranking and sorting as well as selecting the most promising ones.
Introduction
The International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) was established in 2000 with the goal of ensuring a sustainable nuclear energy supply to help meet 21st century global energy needs. INPRO’s activities are centred on the key concepts of global nuclear energy sustainability and the development of long-range nuclear energy strategies, so that nuclear energy is and remains available to meet national energy needs in interested IAEA Member States.
Comparative evaluation of NES/scenario options based on the MAVT method
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a tool aimed at supporting decision makers who are faced with making numerous and conflicting assessments and intend to highlight conflicts and find compromises in the decision making process [3,4]. The MCDA problems consist of a finite number of alternatives, explicitly known in the beginning of the decision support process. Each alternative is represented by its performance in multiple criteria. The problem may be defined as finding the best alternative for a decision maker, or finding a set of acceptable trade-off alternatives. Studies properly organized on the MCDA base represent a process not only formally operating with a set of mathematical methods and various analytical tools, but also leading to a comprehensive understanding of the problem and its elaboration. MCDA does not provide a ‘right solution’, in this regard it would be correct to talk about a compromise or a trade-off solution, paying special attention to an analysis of the solution stability to various methods used and their model parameters.
