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New Reactor Concepts for New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants in the Usa: an Overview

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New Reactor Concepts for New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants in the Usa: an Overview Fifth Yugoslav Nuclear Society Conference YUNSC - 2004 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ NEW REACTOR CONCEPTS FOR NEW GENERATION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN THE USA: AN OVERVIEW JASMINA VUJIĆ, EHUD GREENSPAN and MIODRAG MILOŠEVIĆ* Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA [email protected], [email protected] *VINCA Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Belgrade, Serbian and Montenegro [email protected] ABSTRACT With the growing demands for more reliable energy sources, there is an international interest in the development of new nuclear energy systems to be deployed between 2010 and 2030, that will improve safety and reliability, decrease proliferation risks, improve radioactive waste management and lower cost of nuclear energy production. Six nuclear energy systems were selected as candidates for this Generation IV initiative. In this paper we will explore each of these concepts, as well as several of more advanced concepts. Key words: Generation IV, nuclear energy systems, non-proliferation 1. INTRODUCTION Just a few years ago, many analysts were projecting the decline of nuclear power. Reality has proven these projections to be wrong. The reasons for revival of nuclear energy are very clear: • nuclear plants have performed exceedingly well. As a group, U.S. nuclear utilities have improved the availability of their plants from about 70 percent in 1990 to close to 90 percent today and are producing electricity at about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour (about the same as the most efficient natural gas plants); • consolidation of the nuclear utility industry is leading to the formation of large nuclear utilities with tremendous efficiencies and expertise in operations, maintenance, and training and who have a long-term interest in nuclear power; and • the NRC has reformed its operation and has, with the success of its license renewal process, proven itself to be a fair and consistent regulator with which industry can work to continue operating new plants and potentially build new ones. Uranium resources would be depleted within a few decades without the deployment of fast breeder reactors in symbiosis with the existing and new reactor types. Thus, for a transition to a nuclear driven hydrogen economy to be sustainable, the nuclear side of the equation must include not only the tie to hydrogen generation but also to the breeding of fissile from fertile uranium Opportunities for new construction include: ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 495 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Fifth Yugoslav Nuclear Society Conference YUNSC - 2004 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ • Evolutionary Light Water Reactors; Advanced designs already certified by NRC, System 80+, ABWR. • Generation III+; Designs that can be certified and built in this decade, Developed under the DOE ″Near-Term Deployment″ effort, AP-1000, ESBWR, PBMR. • Generation IV; Advanced, integrated nuclear energy systems, Developed under the DOE ″Generation IV Roadmap″ effort, With goals, sustainability; safety and reliability and economics. The current LWRs (identified by the DOE as Generation II reactors) cope and interfere with accident sequences through active means to assure that the consequences of the accident remain within specified acceptable limits. Advanced reactors now being considered for deployment (or Generation III and III+), like AP600/AP1000, adopt the same philosophy, but accomplish it with passive means to the maximum extent possible. Concerns over energy resource availability, climate change, air quality, and energy security suggest an important role for nuclear power in future energy supplies. While the current Generation II and III nuclear power plant designs provide an economically, technically, and publicly acceptable electricity supply in many markets, further advances in nuclear energy system design can broaden the opportunities for the use of nuclear energy. To explore these opportunities, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology has engaged governments, industry, and the research community world-wide in a wide-ranging discussion on the development of next- generation nuclear energy systems known as "Generation IV". This has resulted in the formation of the Generation-IV International Forum (GIF), a group whose member countries are interested in jointly defining the future of nuclear energy research and development. In short, "Generation IV" refers to the development and demonstration of one or more Generation IV nuclear energy systems that offer advantages in the areas of economics, safety and reliability, sustainability, and could be deployed commercially by 2030. The Generation IV reactors are supposed to demonstrate enhanced safety with respect to the passive designs [1-4]. 2. TECHNOLOGY GOALS FOR GENERATION IV NUCLEAR ENERGY SYSTEM The guiding principles are: • technology goals for Generation IV systems must be challenging and stimulate the development of innovative systems; • Generation IV systems must be responsive to energy needs worldwide; and • Generation IV concepts must define complete nuclear energy systems, not simply reactor technologies. Caveats to the goals: ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 496 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Fifth Yugoslav Nuclear Society Conference YUNSC - 2004 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ • the goals will guide the development of new nuclear energy systems on a broad front. While desirable, not all goals may be met by any single nuclear energy system; • the goals are not overly specific because the social, regulatory, economic, and technological conditions of 2030 and beyond are difficult to predict; and • the goals must not be construed as regulatory requirements. The goals include three goal areas: • Sustainability Resource input SU-1 Waste outputs SU-2 Nonproliferation SU-3 • Safety & Reliability Excellence SR-1 Core damage SR-2 Emergency response SR-3 • Economics Life cycle cost EC-1 Risk to capital EC-2 SU-1: Generation IV nuclear energy systems including fuel cycles will provide sustainable energy generation that meets clean air objectives and promotes long-term availability of systems and effective fuel utilization for worldwide energy production. SU-2: Generation IV systems will minimize and manage their nuclear waste and notably reduce the long term stewardship burden in the future, thereby improving protection for public health and the environment. SU-3: Generation IV nuclear energy systems including fuel cycles will preserve the proliferation resistance. SR-1: Generation IV nuclear energy systems operations will excel in safety and reliability. SR-2: Generation IV nuclear energy systems will have a very low likelihood and degree of reactor core damage. SR-3: Generation IV nuclear energy systems will eliminate the need for off site emergency response. EC-1: Generation IV nuclear energy systems will have a clear life-cycle cost advantage over other energy sources. EC-2: Generation IV nuclear energy systems will have a level of financial risk comparable to other energy projects. 3. GENERATION IV REACTOR CONCEPTS Generation IV reactor concepts were identified via a formal DOE "Request for Information" (RFI) issued in April 2001. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 497 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Fifth Yugoslav Nuclear Society Conference YUNSC - 2004 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 3.1. Generation IV Water Cooled Reactor Concepts This process resulted in submittal of 30 advanced water reactor concepts by researchers and industry experts in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, and the U.S. In addition, the technical working group itself developed information on eight concepts, yielding a total of 38 concepts for evaluation. The technical working
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