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<title>A Statistical Study of Factors Affecting the Success of Nuclear Operations</title>
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<td width="75%" valign="top"><p ALIGN="left"><font face="Arial" size="6"><b><strong>A
Statistical Study of Factors Affecting the Success of Nuclear Operations</strong></b></font></p>
<p><strong><font face="Arial" size="4">BY Sankar Sunder, John Stephenson and Richard
Woodfin <br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="3"><em>Sterling Consulting Group</em></font></strong><font face="Arial" size="4"><br>
</font><font face="Arial" size="3">(<em>originally published by PMA OnLine Magazine: 12/98</em>)</font><font size="4"></p>
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<td width="50%"><b><font SIZE="4"><p ALIGN="center"></font><font face="Arial">Abstract</font></b></p>
<p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><font face="Arial">Nuclear plants today account for about 20% of the
US’s electricity generation. The power generated by these plants is non-polluting to
the environment, since there are no CO<sub>2</sub>, SO<sub>2</sub> or NO<sub>x</sub>
emissions associated with nuclear fuel. In a world increasingly concerned about the
greenhouse effect and air-quality, this might be construed as an advantage leading to
ever-increasing popularity for nuclear power. </font></td>
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<td width="100%" colspan="2"><font face="Arial">The facts, however, are sadly different.
The last new nuclear plant in America was ordered in 1978, and each year brings news of
the de-commissioning of one or more nuclear plants that didn’t live up to their
promise. </font><p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><font face="Arial">Due to their high capital costs,
nuclear plants have been criticized as white elephants that don’t belong in a
deregulated environment. Environmental activists such as Greenpeace also rally against
nuclear power, since they believe that the potential for environmental disaster (witness
Chernobyl) far outweighs any emissions-related advantages that nuclear plants may have.
Forced (or unplanned) outages at nuclear plants draw the ire of both economic and
environmental critics, since such outages could be symptomatic of failing economic models,
as well as potentially dangerous technical problems.</font></p>
<p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"><font face="Arial">While technical problems and expensively
de-commissioned plants corner all the media attention, a number of America’s nuclear
plants continue to quietly chug away, providing inexpensive and non-polluting power,
without problems. The operations of these plants offer valuable insights into the factors
governing success in the nuclear industry, while the failed or poorly performing nuclear
plants provide equally important insights on managerial and operational pitfalls. In this
article, we present a comprehensive statistical survey to determine the operational,
financial, technical and managerial factors that most significantly affect the success of
nuclear operations. Our study uses data for over 100 nuclear plants and 70 operating
companies over a period of five years, for its analysis. The authors believe that the
results of this study will be useful to utility companies and public utility commissions,
as they seek ways to improve rates of success in nuclear operations. </font></td>
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