Analysis on operational efficiency and its influencing factors of China’s nuclear power plants

After implementing the new reform policy of the electric system in 2015, the market-oriented reform of nuclear power prices has been further deepened, as China's nuclear power plants, like other market participants, have also faced increasingly fierce competition. One critical issue worth investigating is how well these plants perform and the influencing factors. To address that issue, we construct an SBM-ML-Tobit model based on plant-level data over five years, from 2016 to 2020. And for all we know, this is the first study to examine Chinese nuclear power plants' operational efficiency. The empirical results indicate significant differences in operational efficiencies between these plants; the operational efficiency levels of all the plants are improved to varying degrees in the sample interval with the increasingly fierce market competition. In addition, our findings suggest that operational efficiencies of power plants are significantly promoted by capacity utilization, average unit size, and unit capacity factor, significantly suppressed by plant size. Again, the operational efficiency levels of plants with higher unit capacity factors are less adversely affected by plant size. Accordingly, our study provides important policy suggestions for better design of the mechanisms to improve the operational efficiency of China's nuclear power plants. [Display omitted] •The average efficiency of nuclear power plants is 0.847 from 2016 to 2020.•Efficiency levels are on the rise with an average increase of 10.2%.•Efficiency levels are promoted by the unit load factor and unit capacity factor.•Nuclear power plants with larger units tend to be more efficient.•Larger plants are technically inefficient than the smaller ones.