JPDR decommissioning program — plan and experience

Itō, Makoto; Kawasaki, Michiko; Yokota, Mitsuo

doi:10.1016/0029-5493(90)90219-n

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Because the metal walls of a nuclear vessel become radioactive (Ishikawa et al, 1990), a decommissioned nuclear core and vessel must be buried for many generations, and the opportunity to recycle key exotic metals is lost. Thus, nuclear power depletes our base of elemental resources.…”

Section: Depletion Of Elemental Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits to growth: Can nuclear power supply the world’s needs?

Abbott¹

2012

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Could nuclear power be rapidly expanded on a global scale? There are a number of practical limiting factors, including site availability and acceptability, nuclear waste disposal issues, and the risks of accidents and proliferation. But there are also a variety of resource limitations. One particular resource limitation that has not been clearly articulated in the nuclear debate thus far is the availability of the relatively scarce metals used in the construction of the reactor vessel and core. While this scarcity is not of immediate concern, it would present a hard limit to the ultimate expansion of nuclear power. This limit appears to be a harder one than the supply of uranium fuel. An increased demand for rare metalsÑsuch as hafnium, beryllium, zirconium, and niobium, for exampleÑwould also increase their price volatility and limit their rate of uptake in nuclear power stations. Metals used in the nuclear vessel eventually become radioactive and, on decommissioning, those with long half-lives cannot be recycled on timescales useful to human civilization. Thus, a large-scale expansion of nuclear power would reduce Òelemental diversityÓ by depleting the worldÕs supply of some elements and making them unavailable to future generations.Keywords elemental diversity, nuclear power, resource limits, scalability, solar thermal, uranium N uclear power advocates can be broadly described in two categories: nuclear realists and nuclear utopians. A nuclear realist suggests something on the order of 1 terawatt of nuclear power as part of the global energy mix, providing security in terms of energy diversity and reduced carbon emissions. Nuclear power is attractive, for example, for highly industrialized populations living on islands with a paucity of natural resources. It can also be argued that nuclear power has a key role to play in meeting emissions targets (Brook, 2012) for mitigating climate change. 1 A nuclear utopian goes much further and suggests that nuclear power can potentially supply the bulk of the worldÕs energy needs for many thousands of years to come and that perhaps a mix of renewables with nuclear power as the backbone supply is the long-term energy future (Manheimer, 2006). Given the awesome power density delivered by nuclear stations, it makes sense to

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Section: Depletion Of Elemental Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%