The need for innovative nuclear reactor and fuel cycle systems: Strategy for development and future prospects

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials

“…In addition, accidents at nuclear power plants have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl) or damaging (Three-Mile Island), and although the nuclear industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors, and has proposed new (but generally untested) ''inherently'' safe reactor designs (Piera, 2010;Penner et al, 2008;Adamantiades and Kessides, 2009;Mourogov et al, 2002;Mourogov, 2000), there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built, and operated correctly. For example, Pacific Gas and Electric Company had to redo some modifications it made to its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant after the original work was done backwards (Energy Net, 2010), and French nuclear regulators recently told the firm Areva to correct a safety design flaw in its latest-generation reactor (Nuclear Power Daily, 2009).…”

Ionic Liquids-Based Extraction: A Promising Strategy for the Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycle

“…The most well-known process, PUREX, was developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1940s. To meet mounting energy and environmental requirements, major scientific breakthroughs that ameliorate the NFC are needed . The advanced NFC maximizes fuel resource utilization, reduces the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste, facilitates handling and transportation, and saves on geological repository costs .…”

“…To meet mounting energy and environmental requirements, major scientific breakthroughs that ameliorate the NFC are needed. 8 The advanced NFC maximizes fuel resource utilization, reduces the volume and toxicity of nuclear waste, facilitates handling and transportation, and saves on geological repository costs. 9 As a separation technology for the advanced nuclear fuel cycle, room-temperature ionic liquids, a novel type of solvent, show promise.…”

Back to the Future

“…Though nuclear engineers have talked about SMRs since the 1950s, the current wave of interest dates back to the early 2000s. The problem, as laid out by analysts from the IAEA’s Department of Nuclear Energy, was that “quite simply, over the last 15 years, nuclear power has been losing market share badly in a growing world electricity capacity market” (Mourogov, Fukuda, and Kagramanian 2002, 286). Their diagnosis: “we, in all our doings, continue to rely on nuclear technology developed in the 1950s, which had its roots in military applications which cannot exclude absolutely the possibility of a severe accident and which has reached its limits from an economic point of view” (Mourogov, Fukuda, and Kagramanian 2002, 292).…”