In this survey paper, we bring together the insights from six country case studies on decommissioning commercial nuclear power plants (NPPs). The six countries we selected for our research have commercial nuclear industries that span a wide spectrum in terms of organization, regulation, financial provisions, and production of decommissioning services. Based on the cross-comparison of countries and their approaches to decommissioning, we highlight a series of gaps in the existing research.

With nuclear decommissioning moving out of niche research, questions on optimal organizational models arise. We compare the former market-based UK parent body organization model (now changed to a state-organized model) to the approach in the USA, which see an emergence of specialized actors in the field. We find that market-based approaches may bring advantages in terms of efficiency but also bear the risk of information asymmetry, high transaction costs, and financial liability issues.

Given the need to combat climate change and the recent energy price increases for electricity and natural gas, investments into new nuclear power plants are considered an option in some countries. In this paper, we discuss economic aspects of such investments, differentiating between three different types of reactor technology, and discuss economic aspects.

Today, nuclear new builds are again being discussed in media and the literature. In the paper we benchmark current available estimation techniques for small modular reactor (SMR) concepts and introduce a unique dataset of SMR concepts. Finally we compare our results with current costs of renewable energy sources.