Design of an Assessment Tool for Site Evaluation of Nuclear Power Plants

With the purpose of providing preliminary assessments of specific locations in their ability to support a nuclear power plant using a quantitative method, a tool has been developed to accept input from users and provide an output of an evaluative score. With a focus on nuclear power plants that use water-based cooling and heat transfer methods, the tool considers environmental factors of the site and how they relate to nuclear power plant supportability; it reviews the socioeconomic factors of the region surrounding the site; and it considers the factors of the location that can impact the operational technical efficiency of a nuclear power plant. Using both spectral and binary scales, where a spectrum is assigned a minimum, maximum, and most preferred value, and the binary inputs allow for yes or no responses, as well as a weighting scale for each individual input factor and high level evaluation category, the tool provides a final score indicating how well the location should be capable of supporting a nuclear power plant.