Nuclear Power Reactors Worldwide: Technology Developments, Diffusion Patterns, and Country-By- Country Analysis of Implementation (1951-2017)
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Wealer, Ben; Bauer, Simon; Landry, Nicolas; Seiß, Hannah; von Hirschhausen, Christian R. Research Report Nuclear power reactors worldwide: Technology developments, diffusion patterns, and country-by- country analysis of implementation (1951-2017) DIW Data Documentation, No. 93 Provided in Cooperation with: German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) Suggested Citation: Wealer, Ben; Bauer, Simon; Landry, Nicolas; Seiß, Hannah; von Hirschhausen, Christian R. (2018) : Nuclear power reactors worldwide: Technology developments, diffusion patterns, and country-by-country analysis of implementation (1951-2017), DIW Data Documentation, No. 93, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/179000 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. 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Reproduction and distribution in any form, also in parts, requires the express written permission of DIW Berlin. Data Documentation 93 Ben Wealer1234, Simon Bauer2, Nicolas Landry3, Hannah Seiß2, Christian von Hirschhausen23 Nuclear Power Reactors Worldwide – Technology Developments, Diffusion Patterns, and Country-by- Country Analysis of Implementation (1951–2017) Berlin, April 2018 1 Corresponding author: [email protected], [email protected], phone +49 (0)30-314-75837. 2 Technische Universität Berlin, Workgroup for Infrastructure Policy (WIP), Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin. 3 DIW Berlin, Department of Energy, Transportation, Environment, Mohrenstraße 58, 10117 Berlin. 4 The authors are with the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), and with Berlin University of Technology, Workgroup for Infrastructure Policy, and, both institutions share a long-term research program on nuclear energy, see for other publications https://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.528152.en. We thank Stefan Seifert for initiating the data work, Clemens Gerbaulet for long-term membership of the team, Matthias Ilg, Rosina Saß, and other project assistants for research support; the usual disclaimer applies. Data Documentation 93 Executive Summary Executive Summary Nuclear energy is among the most important innovations of the twentieth century, and it continues to play an important role in twenty-first century discussions. In particular, there is a debate about the potential contribution of nuclear power to policies of climate change mitigation and energy security in both, industrialized and emerging countries. In this context, many existing nuclear countries, and others considering entering the sector, are facing ques- tions of how to structure organizational models for nuclear power, and what lessons to be learned from the past seven decades of civilian use of nuclear power. The objective of this Data Documentation is to trace the development of nuclear power since its beginnings, by providing both a technological and a country-specific perspective, to allow a better understanding of issues on nuclear power going forward. Our hypothesis, based on the early literature on nuclear power post World War 2, e.g., the Acheson- Lilienthal Report (1946), Lovins and Lovins (1980) but also a more recent survey of the litera- ture (Hirschhausen 2017), is that nuclear power is the “child of scientific research and the military” (François Lévêque 2014, 212), the development of which follows an “economies-of- scope”-logic: nuclear power is developed for military and civilian purposes (e.g., electricity, medical services), and thus obeys no simple economic logic that could be expressed, e.g., in simple business investment calculus (Davis 2012). Rather than searching for an economic rationale where there is none, it is therefore instructive to analyze specific diffusion patterns of nuclear power, based on stylized organizational models, and going back to the origins in the middle of the last century. A certain understanding of nuclear reactor physical principles is useful to understand the link between different applications of nuclear power, and the inherent link between military and other uses. Nuclear fission was developed at industrial scale to produce the atomic bomb, in the Manhattan Project. All subsequent applications derive from the first large-scale military application, be it more sophisticated nuclear weaponry, electricity, medical uses, etc. Post- WW2 reactor technologies were developed with the scope-objectives, be it the graphite- moderated reactors in the U.K., France, and the Soviet Union, or the heavy-water reactors in Canada and Sweden; the light-water route, pursued by the U.S. thanks to a separate pluto- I Data Documentation 93 Executive Summary nium facility, was also rooted in a military application, i.e. submarine propulsion. There is no purely “civil” (sometimes used “peaceful”) use of nuclear power. A historical analysis of the emergence of nuclear power since 1945 suggests to distinguish four periods: i/ Between 1945 and into the mid-1950s, four major countries had established inde- pendent, national pathways of nuclear technologies for military purposes and electricity generation: the U.S., the Soviet Union, the U.K., and France; ii/ subsequent to the mid-1950s, and the failure of US attempts to control prolifera- tion of nuclear material, mainly the “Atoms for Peace” program, lead to fierce competition between the two nuclear superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, for controlling techno- logical diffusion. The US approach was much more “liberal”, by selling technology and li- censes to adoption countries, like Japan, Korea, and Germany, whereas the Soviet Union kept the technology and only gave away turnkey reactors to satellite states. Some countries were able to develop their own nuclear pathway, such as India, Pakistan, and Israel; iii/ starting in the mid-/late 1980s, China developed its nuclear sector, to become the third nuclear superpower, and the move from the first to the “second nuclear age” (Bracken, 2012), with ten or even more countries controlling the nuclear bomb, including North Korea and attempts in Iran; iv/ Post-Fukushima (2011) is characterized by the implosion of nuclear power in Western capitalist market economies, and the closure of nuclear power plants, often before reaching technical lifetimes, due to economic reasons; many of the newbuild projects were abandoned, too. This leaves the development of nuclear power to “other”, non-market sys- tems, where countries hang on to nuclear development, for political, military-strategic, or other reasons, mainly the nuclear superpowers China and Russia. “Nuclear diplomacy”, i.e. attempts to attract partner countries by providing them reactor technology more or less for free, is gaining ground in particular in China, Russia, and—to a lesser extent—the U.S. The analysis of the diffusion of nuclear power on a country-by-country basis reveals different patterns: we distinguish “economies-of-scope” trajectories, recipient countries of nuclear technologies with and without subsequent indigenous technology catch-up, and “other” II Data Documentation 93 Executive Summary countries; we also identify current trends in potential newcomer countries, such as Turkey, Bangladesh, and Sudan. Initial hopes placed on “Generation IV” and/or small modular reactors (SMRs) have not been fulfilled. Although some Gen IV research reactors are developed, no technology has any perspective of becoming economically competitive, neither with current nuclear technolo- gies, nor with conventional fossil or renewable generation in combination with storage. Most SMRs are based on designs that are several decades old, and none of them is close to attaining any sort of commercial availability. The Data Documentation fills a research gap in the literature, in that it provides bottom-up, evidence-based proof that nuclear power follows no economic rationale, but some other logic linked to “science and warfare”. None of the