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