Adjusting Business Models to Open Ecosystem-Based Innovation in Nuclear Decommissioning

A high proportion of existing nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Europe will reach the end of their operational life in the next two to three decades. Consequently, decommissioning and dismantling NPPs and related facilities opens up business opportunities to various actors within and outside of the nuclear industry. The forthcoming decommissioning projects challenge plant owners, decommissioning contractors, various technology providers, and researchers to combine and complement their capabilities and resources as complex decommissioning projects inevitably involve multi-actor collaboration. Decommissioning also calls for modifications and innovation of business models (BMs), not least as the industry is novel to many actors and primarily in an emerging state. This paper introduces a research design and the preliminary findings of an ongoing research on BMs and open, ecosystem-based innovation in nuclear decommissioning.