Nuclear Energy: The major advances in the 1990s and implications for the future

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Nuclear Energy The major advances in the 1990s
and implications for the future
Per F. PetersonProfessor Department of Nuclear
Engineering University of California,
Berkeley UC Forum on Global Nuclear Partnership
Planning Meeting February 9, 2006

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U.C.Historical Leadership in Nuclear Science
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Context Recent Events

• Important recent events
• Global coal consumption reaches 5.4 billion tons
  per year in 2002
• As of September 2005, 33 U.S. plants had received
  20-year license renewals, 16 were under review,
  and 27 were planned for submission by 2010 (73
  of U.S. plants total). Nuclear Regulatory
  Commission announces plans to hire 300 engineers
  (October 2005)
• 2005 Energy Bill provides major incentives for
• new near-term commercial reactor construction,
  and
• authorizes funding for the U.S. Generation IV
  program to build a demonstration high-temperature
  reactor at Idaho National Laboratory to produce
  electricity and hydrogen
• Announcements for new Combined Construction and
  Operating Licenses (as of January, 2006)
• 10 utilities
• 11 plant sites
• 16 plants (4 dual unit AP-1000s)
• U.S. Senate selects Yucca Mountain as site for
  national repository, July 2002, NRC license
  application delayed
• In 2004, average production cost of nuclear
  electricity reaches 1.7 cents/kWhr, average
  capacity factor 90.7, 70 fraction of all
  non-fossil energy produced in United States

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UC Berkeley brings several key areas of expertise
for reactor and fuel cycle technologies

• Reactor safety/licensing/PRA (Kastenberg,
  Peterson)
• Reactor theory (Vujic/Greenspan)
• Fuels and materials (Olander/Wirth)
• Thermal hydraulics (Peterson)
• Repositories and fuel cycles (Ahn)
• Structural design (Stojadinovic/Whittaker)

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New nuclear infrastructure will differ in major
ways from the 1970s
2000 4-D computer aided design and virtual
walk-throughs
1978 Plastic models on roll-around carts
McGuire Nuclear Station Reactor Building Models.
1000 MW Reactor (Lianyungang Unit 1)
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Key changes

• Reactor operations
• 90 fleet average capacity factor
• Multiple advances in many areas (human
  performance, etc.)
• Regulation
• Risk/performance based regulation
• Best-estimate licensing
• New construction
• Passive safety/reduced cost
• Modern construction methods
• Advances in repository science/policy
• Coupling of repository/fuel cycle
• New global security environment
• Dispersion of enrichment
• Risks of theft/sabotage

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Nuclear technology is now a fertile field for new
ideas

• Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
• Expand U.S. spent fuel management to include
  modest quantities from countries that forego
  enrichment and reprocessing (e.g., prevent Iran
  from becoming a widely emulated role model)
• Avoid the technical need for a second U.S.
  repository
• An area that is ripe for good science and wise
  policy measures
• An area where the appropriate role for
  reprocessing will be contentious
• A workable economic model is needed
• An area where repository science and technology
  should obviously play a central role
• New nuclear energy infrastructure
• Costs are dominated by reactors
• will bids be under 1500/kW?
• Opportunities for major additional reductions?