ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the intense fiscal and economic calculus surrounding, for example, the economic viability of emerging nuclear power technologies in specific national energy markets. It demonstrates by case studies of options exercised both for and against initial or continuing investment in nuclear power in which cost profiles and other economic factors have been cited as fundamentally material to nuclear technology take-up or rejection. The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy defines its primary mission as advancing nuclear power as a resource capable of meeting America's energy, environmental and national security needs by resolving the various technical, cost, safety, proliferation resistance and security barriers to meeting those demands through research, technological development, and its demonstration. America's present nuclear reactor fleet is currently adding only four new reactor units, two at the Vogtle site in the state of Georgia, and two more at the V. C. Summer site in South Carolina.
