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The literature on energy technology costs, diffusion, and learning has been characterized by data limitations, partial or arbitrary data sets, apples to oranges comparisons, and imprecision in the use of key concepts and terminology. Two responses to our paper, Lovering et al. (2016), by Koomey et al. and Gilbert et al. reflect many of these problems, conflating learning curves with experience curves, trends in actual costs with the relationship between cost estimates and final construction costs, and component costs with total installed costs. The respondents use inconsistent definitions of demonstration, first-of-a-kind, and commercial deployment across different energy technologies. They also propose to compare final installed costs for nuclear power plants, encompassing construction and finance costs, across different national economies and time periods encompassing a wide range of macro-economic circumstances and finance arrangements that overwhelm any signal from trends associated with the actual construction costs of the plants in question. In this response, we address the specific issues raised in these papers and suggest better practices for comparing energy technology costs, trends, and technological learning.

The existing literature on the construction costs of nuclear power reactors has focused almost exclusively on trends in construction costs in only two countries, the United States and France, and during two decades, the 1970s and 1980s. These analyses, Koomey and Hultman (2007); Grubler (2010), and Escobar-Rangel and Lévêque (2015), study only 26% of reactors built globally between 1960 and 2010, providing an incomplete picture of the economic evolution of nuclear power construction. This study curates historical reactor-specific overnight construction cost (OCC) data that broaden the scope of study substantially, covering the full cost history for 349 reactors in the US, France, Canada, West Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea, encompassing 58% of all reactors built globally. We find that trends in costs have varied significantly in magnitude and in structure by era, country, and experience. In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology.

Historically, the U.S. has sought to use commercial trade in nuclear technologies to influence international nuclear security standards and promote nonproliferation. Concern has grown that, with a stagnating domestic nuclear industry and declining export industry, the U.S. will lose a significant tool of foreign policy and leverage in maintaining strong international standards. While the issue has been discussed extensively in the policy community and used as a powerful rhetorical tool to motivate tangentially related policies such as subsidizing existing U.S. nuclear plants, no one has systematically assessed the issue, structured the problem and proposed and evaluated potential solutions. Here we briefly analyze the current international state of play, and then outline a set of specific strategies the U.S. might adopt on its own, or promote internationally, to retain its influence. Building on the literature, nuclear security and nuclear power experts assisted us in framing the issues and then, in a participatory workshop, helped us to assess and refine possible strategies. While not all experts agreed that U.S. influence has already declined, most indicated that it likely would decline in the future if present domestic and international trends continue. Although none of the proposed strategies that we advanced or that the experts suggested are likely to be effective in the short term, several warrant ongoing refinements and, if they can be implemented, might have beneficial impacts in coming decades.