AUTHORS: Nikolett Deutsch, Attila Fiáth, Miklós Virág, László Berényi

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ABSTRACT: After the Fukushima Daichii Accident, nuclear phase-out policy (so-called “Energiewende”) of Germany and the increasing use of renewable energy sources for electricity generation led to new challenges in energy balancing and security of supply, and induced the reduction of wholesale electricity prices especially in Eastern-European Countries to the detriment of German households creating a financially risky environment for the operators of conventional large-scale power plants. Due to their front-loaded cost-structure and the relatively high share of fixed versus variable costs in its costs structure, nuclear energy plants were extremely exposed to wholesale price fluctuations. The goal of this study is to highlight the impact of diminishing German wholesale electricity prices on the margin of safety of two Eastern-European nuclear power plants.

KEYWORDS: nuclear power plants, CVP analysis, margin of safety, wholesale electricity prices

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WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics, ISSN / E-ISSN: 1109-9526 / 2224-2899, Volume 15, 2018, Art. #20, pp. 197-212


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