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.

Part of sustainability is the debate about ecological carrying capacity, which was initiated by a group of scientists led by Johan Rockström, who proposed the concept of planetary boundaries. The challenge of climate change requires strong decarbonization and has led to increased investments in low-carbon technologies such as nuclear power. Although no greenhouse gas emissions are produced during fission, hazardous radioactive waste is generated. This burden for our society is underrepresented.

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.