Since 1997, in anticipation of privatization and deregulation in the world electric power industry, the IAEA and the EUCG Nuclear Committee have worked cooperatively to develop and implement the Nuclear Economic Performance Information System (NEPIS) for various regions of the world.
NEPIS actually includes detailed annual operation, maintenance and capital cost data. The database, developed on functional basis, comprises four parts, containing information on stations and plants, and detailed information on functional cost accounts for non-outages and for outages. The detailed functional cost accounts are divided into operations, maintenance, support services, plant administration, total direct costs, total indirect costs and capital costs. Each cost account is further broken down into resource categories that include labor, materials and outside services.
Additional data on nuclear power plant performance indicators such as capability factors, energy availability factors, energy production, refueling outage durations and cost information (e.g. capital, insurance and decommissioning) are included, some of this information being imported from IAEA Power Reactor Information System (PRIS).
NEPIS is open for participation to all NPP operators and utilities in the world, which are committed to provide data relevant to the database.
NEPIS contains annual data as of 1990 from more than 90 NPPs. Part of this data has been provided by NEPIS participants, and another significant part has been provided by EUCG members. The actual size of the NEPIS database contributes to the level of statistical confidence with which users can do analysis and benchmarking.