Abstract
Nuclear power development is a complex issue spanning cyber, physical, and social systems that is essential to achieving energy security and climate goals. With the ongoing worldwide trend towards carbon neutrality, the positioning of nuclear power in energy mix should be reconsidered. This paper aims to present a systematic review of current research on optimization of nuclear power development. The concept of cyber-physical-social system in energy (CPSSE) is adopted, which provides a suitable perspective and enables the review of relevant studies to achieve some novel insights. Based on the CPSSE, firstly, a research framework is established and the main research elements in optimization are identified, followed by a proposed conceptual risk-based optimization model. Secondly, current studies are analyzed and classified into four categories according to the research boundary. The status quo and limitations are discussed. It is found that the research results of nuclear-specific issues have not been well integrated into the optimization of nuclear power. As a relatively reliable power supply, nuclear power is capable of maintaining power and electricity adequacy of the whole system, especially in the case of power shortage caused by long-period low output of renewable energy or extreme external disasters. This superiority should not be ignored in the optimization. Other critical factors that should be further considered include disruptive technologies, nuclear safety, energy policies, and stakeholder behaviors. Finally, suggestions are given for future research.
IN response to the challenges of global climate change, many countries have formulated carbon neutrality goals. Driven by the new climate commitments, effective actions have been applied to accelerate the process of energy transition, for example, reducing fossil energy consumption and increasing the proportion of zero-carbon and low-carbon energy resources [
Nuclear power has played an important role in many countries and regions.
As a technology with great development potential, the prospect of nuclear power, however, has been facing great controversies. The urgent need to achieve significant global carbon emission reduction at an affordable cost drives the development of nuclear power [
It is an important issue to position the role of nuclear power and optimize its share in energy mix, involving multi-dimensional factors of technology, economy, environment, politics, and society [
For the optimization of nuclear power development, attention should be paid not only to the characteristics of nuclear power chain, but also to a wider range of external factors such as energy economy, policy mechanism, climate change response, and investment game behavior. Multi-dimensional objectives of technology-economy-environment-society should be coordinated [
The main contributions of this paper lie in two aspects. Firstly, this paper provides some new thoughts for optimizing the long-term nuclear power development. Based on the CPSSE perspective, a framework model is constructed, including cyber, physical, and social spaces. The basic components, interactions, and key research elements are clarified. Following this, a conceptual optimization model based on the risk concept is proposed, in which multi-dimensional objectives are unified into the objective function in the form of economic value. Secondly, this paper systematically analyzes the current research status from a new perspective. The existing studies are summarized into four categories based on their research boundaries: research on nuclear power chain, research within energy chain considering non-nuclear energy system, research within generalized physical environment considering non-energy physical system, and research comprehensively considering generalized physical system and social system. Moreover, future research suggestions are put forward from the following aspects: ① research framework and methodology; ② simulation model and computational analysis technique; ③ knowledge extraction based on trajectory; ④ decision-making support. By demonstrating the possible future development direction and challenges, we hope that this paper can inspire more thinking on the positioning and optimization of nuclear power development.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the research elements of each dimension (cyber, physical, and social), and the conceptual optimization model of nuclear power development. Section III summarizes the research status and analyzes the merits and limitations of common research methods. Future research suggestions and conclusions are arranged in Sections IV and V, respectively.
The optimization of nuclear power development has the characteristics of long timescale (several decades), multi-period (past, present, and future), and multi-spatial scale (global, national, and regional). It involves behaviors of multiple stakeholders (policy makers, energy suppliers, and energy consumers) [

Fig. 1 Framework model for optimization of nuclear power development from CPSSE perspective.
The physical space consists of the nuclear power chain and its external physical systems. As nuclear power is the main research object, the entire lifecycle of nuclear power chain is depicted in detail. The main links include reactor design and development, equipment manufacturing, preliminary work of project (such as site selection, project development, and construction preparation before project kickoff), design and construction of NPP, O&M, aging and life management, early shutdown and decommissioning of nuclear facilities, nuclear fuel cycle (including mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, use at the reactor, spent fuel reprocessing, interim storage, and permanent disposal) [
Deploying nuclear power is not only a technical issue, but also a complex social-economic issue [
The cyber space not only refers to the enabling information technologies such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, simulation reduction, and network science, but also covers information abundance, information security, analysis, and control in a broad sense [
The optimization of nuclear power development involves many interrelated cyber, physical, and social factors. The main research elements that should be considered in optimization are clarified. The complex interactions between the elements of different dimensions in the concept of CPSSE have been described in detail in [
Physical elements mainly include the technical-economic-environmental characteristics of nuclear power, as well as the safety features which are of particular concern. Among them, key elements related to technical characteristic include reactor type, installed capacity, design life, refueling cycle, capacity factor, equipment availability, technical dispatchability, and nuclear fuel supply. Elements related to economic characteristic correspond to the cost-benefit of each part in the whole lifecycle of NPPs. In addition to power generation costs such as construction, O&M, fuel, and decommissioning costs, social costs such as carbon emission cost are also included [
As mentioned above in the framework model, in addition to the nuclear power chain, the optimization of nuclear power development also needs to take other relevant state variables under the generalized physical environment into account. Some examples of key factors include: ① technical-economic-environmental performance parameters of fossil and renewable energy (for example, construction cost of renewable energy, carbon emission per unit of coal power generation), which affect the competitive advantages of nuclear power, thereby affecting investment in nuclear power [
Social elements are closely related to various types of gaming behaviors of participants [
The objectives and behaviors of different participants jointly drive the dynamic process of nuclear power development, which, as a matter of fact, are not completely consistent. For example, government agencies often maximize the benefits of the entire society or the specific classes they represent. They may either guide or intervene in the installed capacity scale and evolution path of nuclear power development by formulating energy and climate policies, setting development goals and plans, adjusting taxes and subsidies, changing the financing environment and other means. On the other hand, energy investors are concerned about maximizing the economic efficiency of enterprises, considering a desirable trade-off between risks and benefits, and carrying out the investment and operation of actual nuclear power projects. From the view of the public, it is a general demand to have access to safe, reliable, and affordable power resources. Nonetheless, there is considerable disagreement over “willingness to live in areas adjacent to NPPs” [
The social elements are often difficult to be mathematically described. However, if the influence term is ignored in the decision-making process of optimization, the actual trajectory of nuclear power development could significantly deviate from the planning expectation, thus bringing unpredictable risks. Therefore, it is strongly suggested in further research to embed social elements into nuclear power development planning.
Cyber elements refer to the generalized information elements related to nuclear power development, and should be closely integrated with the research objective. Cyber elements include information acquisition, knowledge extraction, and decision support, which are necessary for the analysis, control, and intervention of physical and social systems.
Information acquisition refers to obtaining related data and knowledge such as information of working condition, topology, and fault. The effective approaches commonly used are investigation and consultation, specialized acquisition equipment, literature document, expert knowledge, model simulation, and economic experiment [
Knowledge extraction should comprehensively utilize energy, statistics, economics, psychology, and some other multidisciplinary knowledge. It should also integrate a large number of heterogeneous static data and dynamic data of causality, statistics, behavior, and simulation at different time scales. Knowledge extraction aims to quickly refine in-depth knowledge and apply it to explain the trajectory of simulation, analyze the formulation reasons of the phenomenon, define the hypothesis premise and credibility of the conclusion, and draw policy and strategic implications [
Finally, the shift to decision-making paradigm of risk quantification can be carried out through sand table deduction. The causality and correlation are excavated to support the relevant decision-making in planning, operation, and control management for the development of nuclear power and the entire socio-technical complex systems.
Optimization of nuclear power development is a multiyear, multi-domain, and multi-objective, nonlinear, and dynamic programming problem, which should coordinate multi-dimensional objectives including but not limited to economic benefit, safety requirement, resource consumption, environmental impact, and social benefit. Taking the change of nuclear power installed capacity as the main decision variable, the optimization includes two levels of sub-problems: ① optimization of the gross installed capacity in the target year , target optimization; ② optimization of the development trajectory to achieve the given targets, i.e., pathway optimization. Nuclear power and other energy technologies jointly meet the total energy and power demands of the system. Therefore, its development target and pathway are an integral part of the whole energy planning, and the optimization of nuclear power development is a sub-problem of the optimization of energy and power structure.
Conventional deterministic planning and probabilistic planning methods cannot coordinate both the security and economy [
Based on the risk concept, safety conditions and other inequality constraints can be converted into the risk cost, which is expressed in currency. Economy and security objectives can be unified in a monetized objective function. This method enables the collaborative optimization under multi-dimensional objectives. The optimization objective function is to maximize the total risk-return of the entire energy chain during the planning period. The mathematical model can be formulated as:
(1) |
s.t.
(2) |
(3) |
where is the number of time sections included during the planning period; is the number of scenarios for risk optimization; is the probability of scenario occurring in time section ; is the support benefit of energy chain for economic and social development, such as contribution to carbon emission reduction, employment promotion, and science and technology competitiveness; is the total risk cost of the entire energy chain, including energy infrastructure construction cost, O&M cost, fuel consumption cost, energy storage and transmission cost, carbon emissions cost, decommissioning and waste management cost, scarcity value of non-renewable energy resources, public health impact, and other social cost, etc.; and and are the equality and inequality constraint functions of the optimization, respectively.
According to (1), the formulation of risk optimization scenario needs to consider not only the uncertainties of working condition (variables , such as energy production and consumption, energy prices, and carbon emission prices) but also the uncertainties of disturbance (variables , such as nuclear leakage, policy change, public opinion, disruptive energy technology, and extreme external disasters). The former is generally expressed in terms of multiple possible time trajectories and the corresponding probabilities. Differently, the latter can be calculated by multiplying the probability of disturbance and the control cost corresponding to active measures that aim to avoid serious consequences once the disturbance occurs (related to variables ), to obtain risk value and select disturbances that should be considered based on the risk value sorting and engineering standards.
For different research objects and purposes, the objective function and constraint conditions may have some differences in terms of constituent items and mathematical expressions, and their formalization should be completed in conjunction with specific problems.
From the CPSSE perspective, the current research status with respect to the optimization of nuclear power development could be summarized from the aspects of research elements considered, research methods, and decision support effects and limitations. The logical framework to review the research status of nuclear power development from CPSSE perspective is shown in

Fig. 2 Logical framework to review research status of nuclear power development from CPSSE perspective.
The research on the nuclear power chain involves different links of the entire lifecycle including construction, operation, nuclear fuel cycle, and decommissioning. Numerous studies have fully evaluated the safety, technical, economic, and environmental performances of nuclear power.
Due to the potentially high impact on the ecological environment and public health as well as the difficulty encountered to control the consequences once a nuclear leakage accident occurs, safety is the primary prerequisite for the sustainable development of nuclear power. Safety risk mainly stems from the superposition of various factors, for example, mechanical failure, site risk, external natural disaster, and mis-operation behavior [
In general, nuclear power technology is moving towards a higher level of security, higher fuel utilization efficiency, less waste, better flexibility, and multi-use development [
The economic cost of nuclear power is one of the key factors that constrain its sustainable development. Related studies have mainly focused on the total cost and cost composition of nuclear power generation and the changing trend and influencing factors of its economics. In general, traditional economic evaluations calculate the internal rate of return and net present value of NPPs based on engineering economics [
Environmental evaluation mostly adopts methods of lifecycle analysis (LCA) and process chain analysis. These studies can be broadly divided into two categories. The first category is the emission pollution assessment. It includes the assessment of CO2 emissions, radioactive waste accumulation, thermal drainage, and other emissions [
In addition to the aforementioned specialized assessment of nuclear power in different aspects, correlation analysis and comprehensive evaluation of multi-dimensional characteristics are also quite common in current studies. In particular, the coordination of economy and safety has always been one of the biggest challenges that nuclear power development faces, especially in the market environment [
The comparative assessments results of nuclear power and other energy technologies are valuable references for decision-makers to determine their respective roles in the energy system.
Some qualitative studies have coordinated the requirements of energy-economy-environment based on the concept of sustainable development to achieve a comprehensive evaluation of pros and cons of nuclear power compared with other energy technologies [
A quantitative analysis can provide more reliable results for the selection of energy technology and decision-making. The existing quantitative comparative analysis between nuclear power and non-nuclear energy technologies is mainly centered on the environmental impact and economic competitiveness of unit power generation throughout the lifecycle.
The comparisons of environmental impact often use lifecycle CO2 emissions or equivalent CO2 emissions considering other GHG as evaluation criteria [
Cost competitiveness evaluation is the main subject of economic comparison studies. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), which is calculated according to the discounted cash flow method, is often used as the evaluation criteria [
Based on evaluation results achieved for different countries or regions in different years, it can be observed that by using the aforementioned evaluation criteria, the relative rankings of nuclear power and other energy technologies are not fully consistent. Therefore, it is difficult to draw a universal conclusion on “which energy technology is the best choice”.
The optimization of nuclear power development needs to consider a series of constraints such as total energy demand, various resource endowments, and characteristics of different energy technologies from the perspective of the entire energy chain [
Differently, some studies calculate the installed capacity scale of nuclear power in the target year and its evolution pathway according to some simple constraints of power demand and resource development limits [
As mentioned above, nuclear power development is closely related to the generalized physical systems such as climate, ecology, and natural disasters. The development of nuclear power has changed the generalized physical system. For example, nuclear power generation involves no direct carbon emissions and could be rendered a sustainable energy option to reduce global warming [
Some studies have improved the optimization model to consider the impact of climate goals on nuclear power development [
Climate change leads to more frequent occurrence of extreme environmental events, which have affected the operating conditions for different types of energy systems, particularly the power plants. Among all power generation technologies, nuclear power has the highest safety standards. It is more superior to other intermittent renewable energies in maintaining the stable operation status under extreme weather conditions or natural disasters [
The lessons of the Fukushima nuclear accident have indicated that major nuclear power operational incidents or serious nuclear leakage accidents may still occur under serious natural disasters. Related studies, which analyze the impact of natural disasters on nuclear power development, mainly focus on the safety operational risk assessment of NPPs in response to natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami [
However, the aforementioned risks have not been fully considered in the current studies of multiple energy technology selections or power structure optimization including nuclear power. In the optimization objective function, the corresponding risk costs should be considered, which include the opportunity cost of avoiding accidents and the residual risk of accidents that may still occur.
At present, most comprehensive analyses of nuclear power development considering technical, economic, environmental, and social factors are qualitative descriptions, which is helpful to understand the nuclear power development problem and can provide forward-looking judgments on its development trend [
Based on the LCA, an all-sided list of multi-objective decision-making-based evaluation indicators is proposed, serving as a tool to identify the issues that are critical to nuclear power development and to provide numerical information for possible investment in nuclear power or the assessment of the given nuclear power development scenarios [
MCDA method has been widely used in the assessment and selection of energy technologies and power planning [
The contributions of these quantitative studies for multi-comprehensive quantitative evaluation include two aspects. ① Based on expert system, some social dimension criteria that are usually evaluated only qualitatively are classified and converted into numerical information (e.g., [
3) Optimization of Nuclear Power Development Scenarios Based on Combination of Energy Model Simulation and MCDA
This category of research combines the cost-minimized energy optimization model with the MCDA method to propose an effective two-stage energy and power planning analysis framework which not only simulates the dynamic process of system development, but also considers environmental and social factors in a quantitative manner for optimization [
Currently, this analysis framework is mainly used in national energy and power planning [
Currently, the research methodologies for safety and technical‒economic‒environmental characteristics evaluation of nuclear power are quite mature. However, the fruitful results have not been well applied to the optimization of nuclear power development. For example, significant efforts have been devoted to studying the operational flexibility and reliability of NPPs, yet in current research of energy transition and power planning, only the contribution of installed capacity of nuclear power to low-carbon electricity during the regular operation has been considered, while its potential contributions to participating in auxiliary services and improving the reliability of system under extreme weather conditions are ignored.
In the context of carbon neutrality, the future energy system will be integrated with a high proportion of intermittent renewable energy, which is dominated by wind and photovoltaic power. The subsequent problems such as peak load regulation and frequency regulation must be dealt with through low-carbon technologies including nuclear power, especially in the case of insufficient flexible reserve capacity of the system (e.g., in extreme conditions where the output of renewable energy sources is insufficient for a long period, while the energy storage systems cannot be charged and discharged normally). Therefore, the research results of nuclear-power-specific should be better integrated into the research on energy transition and power planning. In addition, the competition and complementarity between nuclear power and other energy technologies including renewables and energy storage should also be considered in different scenarios, so as to more effectively reflect the role of nuclear power in the transition of energy and power structure. Last but not least, current quantitative studies usually only consider technological, economic, and carbon emission issues. It still requires continuous innovations in research frameworks, simulation tools, and analysis methods on how to consider other environmental factors besides carbon emission and social factors.
The simulation model is one of the most important research methods for studying the optimization of nuclear power development and other energy transition problems. Although the numerical model cannot completely reflect all the elements of the object system, it can quantitatively describe the dynamic characteristics of the system, which is conductive to reveal the basic properties of the object system. However, current studies neither reflect the dynamic process of nuclear power development driven by the behaviors of government agencies, energy investors, the public and other participants, nor consider the dynamic response of the system after serious nuclear leakage accidents, disruptive energy technologies, or other disturbances.
Notably, it is not easy to integrate the aforementioned factors, especially considering the complex social factors. A feasible way is to study based on the CPSSE framework, including the development of multi-domain simulation platform, modeling, investigation of multi-source heterogeneous data, hybrid simulation, uncertainty analysis, and decision support [
After obtaining the sequential trajectories of nuclear power development and the entire energy system through simulation methods, it is also necessary to improve the trajectory-based knowledge extraction and decision-support capabilities. The MCDA method is commonly used to coordinate multi-dimensional conflicting objectives. However, the quantitative processing of environmental and social indicators is relatively simple with the given weights affected by subjective expert cognition. The common optimization objective is to minimize (maximize) the economic cost (benefit). Based on this, in the future, the performance indicators of environmental and social dimensions, as well as the risk of uncertain events such as nuclear leakage accidents, should be estimated by economic value and regarded as a component of the objective function. The main objective is to unify the cross-domain and multi-dimensional objectives into economic value, and achieve the optimal nuclear power development targets and pathways considering generalized physical and social elements comprehensively.
Under the background of carbon neutrality, it is extremely important to make reasonable decisions on the mid-and-long-term development of nuclear power, due to its particular role in power system. The optimization of nuclear power development in energy structure is complicated, brought by its characteristics of multiple domains, multiple objectives, multiple timescales, multiple spatial-scopes, and long timespans. It involves generalized physical elements such as nuclear power chain, non-nuclear energy systems, and climate system; social elements related to human behaviors such as policy and public acceptance; and cyber elements that realize the cross-domain integration of information acquisition, knowledge extraction, and decision support.
Current researches tend to have the following limitations: ① the cyber‒physical‒social elements for optimizing decision-making are roughly considered and are not discussed in different certain situations; ② the coordinated optimization of cross-domain and multi-dimensional objectives is not well achieved; ③ the special research on nuclear power chain is not integrated into the comprehensive research of energy and power system planning; ④ the potential contribution of nuclear power to continuously providing reliable and low-carbon power is underestimated or even ignored; ⑤ the influence of high-risk and low-probability events such as nuclear leakage and extreme weather events are not well considered.
Further attention should be paid to the following areas in future research: improvement in research framework, construction of multi-domain hybrid simulation models, specification of objective functions and constraints, evaluation of the role of nuclear power in ensuring the safe operation of power system in particular scenarios with high penetration of renewable energy, quantitative analysis of the impact of social factors such as policy and market game on nuclear power development, risk decision-making considering external disturbances such as nuclear leakage accidents, and joint optimization strategy of nuclear power development targets and pathways.
The global action of achieving carbon neutrality provides a new opportunity for a thorough and comprehensive reflection on the positioning of nuclear power. We believe that through the cross-disciplinary integration of nuclear science, energy, climate, economy, policy, human behavior, and other natural and social sciences, the cyber-physical-social elements and their interactions involved in the optimization of nuclear power development can be quantified more effectively.
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