6. Competitiveness

Comparing construction costs or projected operating costs between EPR and BWR on the basis of the same specifications and for a given site generally results in fairly similar figures, making it impossible to establish even a provisional ranking between the two processes, since the economic conditions in which the various competitors operate are so decisive, although they may differ considerably from one to another.

Comparisons between countries, between operators and even between two sites of the same operator are even more uncertain.

GE Co is pushing ahead with its ESBWR model, which is more competitive than the ABWR, but represents a major technological leap forward based on old and unconvincing industrial references (see §