Economics and nuclear weapons nonproliferation in nuclear power development scenarios

The method of quantile estimates of uncertainties is used to forecast the economic indices of objects of nuclear power and to analyze the uncertainties of the predicted estimates of the balance of nuclear materials and the most likely scenarios of nuclear weapons proliferation taking account of the salient aspects of the initial nuclear materials. It is shown that methods of numerical simulation that do not have evaluated intervals of determination of the physical parameters or an evaluated variance of the results do not contribute any additional information about the objects and processes being studied. It is concluded that the future development of nuclear power in our country requires state regulation of the fuel and energy complex and proliferation risk reduction requires decreasing access to and use of low-enrichment uranium, and the adoption of mixed uranium-plutonium-thorium fuel cycles. __________ Translated from Atomnaya énergiya, Vol. 102, No. 5, pp. 315–321, May, 2007.