The development of nuclear power plants by means of modified model of Fuzzy DEMATEL and GIS in Bushehr, Iran

Abstract Islamic Republic of Iran, a leading country among developing countries, has considered the development of nuclear power plants as a necessity in the long term plan of energy supply due to numerous reasons such as requiring energy development programs, acquiring top technologies, creating diversity and providing energy security, producing clean energy, taking environmental considerations and technical and economic advantages into account. Furthermore, the country legal requirements have set up the long term objective of building and operating nuclear power plants to produce 20,000 MW of electricity for Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. For this purpose, a research was conducted to build new power plants based on the politics of Islamic Republic of Iran by utilizing the International standard requirements of the Atomic Energy and considering environmental, social and economic parameters. In this research, the cause and effect decision making model of Fuzzy DEMATEL was investigated. After numerous studies, the model was modified to build a nuclear power plant in order to demonstrate both the cause and effect relationship among effective criteria in the decision making process and the ultimate weight for each criterion. Finally, the maps showing the spatial location of each criterion were drawn by utilizing the measured weights in GIS and were prepared to apply spatial combination process. Since the presented cause and effect model demonstrates the criteria of access to shoreline the most significant in the locating process and it plays the most important role in decision making for building the nuclear power plant, this criterion and its considerations should be at the apex of the decision making in the feasibility studies of power plant location. According to the results of spatial combination and the proposed cause and effect model, the best model to build a nuclear power plant was determined in Bushehr Province, Iran.