This paper summarizes and consolidates fusion power-plant costing work performed in support of ARPA-E from 2017 through 2024, and documents the evolution of the associated analysis framework from early capital-cost-focused studies to a standards-aligned, auditable costing capability. Early efforts applied ARIES-style cost-scaling relations to generate Nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) estimates and were calibrated through a pilot study with Bechtel and Decysive Systems to benchmark balance-of-plant (BOP) costs and validate plant-level reasonableness from an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) perspective. Subsequent work, informed by Lucid Catalyst studies of nuclear cost drivers, expanded the methodology to treat indirect costs explicitly and to evaluate cost-reduction pathways for non-fusion-island systems through design-for-cost practices, modularization, centralized manufacturing, and learning. As ARPA-E's fusion portfolio expanded, these methods were applied across BETHE and GAMOW concepts (and select ALPHA revisits), including enhanced treatment of tritium handling and plant integration supported by Princeton/PPPL expertise. In 2023 the capability was refactored to align with the IAEA-GEN-IV EMWG-EPRI code-of-accounts lineage, while key ARIES-derived scaling relations were replaced by bottom-up subsystem models for dominant fusion cost drivers (e.g., magnets, lasers, power supplies, and power-core components) coupled to physics-informed power balances and engineering-constrained radial builds. These developments were implemented in the spreadsheet-based Fusion Economics code (FECONs) and released as an open-source Python framework (pyFECONs), providing a transparent mapping from subsystem estimates to standardized accounts and a consistent computation of LCOE.

翻译：本文总结并整合了2017年至2024年间为支持ARPA-E开展的聚变发电厂成本估算工作，记录了相关分析框架的演变历程：从早期聚焦资本成本的研究，发展到符合标准、可审计的成本估算能力。早期工作应用ARIES风格的成本缩放关系来生成第N个同类机组（NOAK）估算，并通过与Bechtel和Decysive Systems合作的试点研究进行校准，以对标电厂配套设施（BOP）成本，并从工程、采购和施工（EPC）角度验证电厂层面的合理性。后续工作借鉴了Lucid Catalyst对核能成本驱动因素的研究，扩展了方法论，以显式处理间接成本，并通过面向成本的设计、模块化、集中制造和学习效应，评估非聚变岛系统的成本降低路径。随着ARPA-E聚变项目组合的扩展，这些方法被应用于BETHE和GAMOW概念（以及部分ALPHA项目的重新评估），包括在普林斯顿/PPPL专业支持下增强了对氚处理和电厂集成的处理。2023年，该能力进行了重构，以符合IAEA-GEN-IV EMWG-EPRI账户编码体系，同时用自底向上的子系统模型取代了关键的ARIES派生缩放关系，这些模型针对主要聚变成本驱动因素（例如磁体、激光器、电源和功率堆芯组件），并与基于物理的功率平衡及工程约束的径向构建相耦合。这些进展已在基于电子表格的聚变经济学代码（FECONs）中实现，并作为开源Python框架（pyFECONs）发布，提供了从子系统估算到标准化账户的透明映射，以及平准化度电成本（LCOE）的一致计算。