June 1, 2009

U.S. Being Passed by Other Nuclear Nations

Dr. Samim Anghaie

The U.S. may have created the roadmap for the next generation of nuclear reactors, but other countries are farther down the road to development. The U.S. Department of Energy initiated the Generation IV Roadmap development project in January 2000. Soon, nine other countries joined, including some of the largest commercial nuclear powers, such as France, Canada, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Together, they formed the Gen IV International Forum (GIF). The process intended to identify a new generation of nuclear energy systems that could be market-ready by 2030 or earlier that would offer significant advances in sustainability, safety and reliability, and economics.

Over the following two years, a large number of experts from participating countries divided the issues among four Technical Working Groups (TWG). I chaired the TWG dealing with nonclassical designs, whose aim was to identify and evaluate novel nuclear energy concepts with potential sustainability, safety, and economic performance well above the current generation of advanced water-, gas-, or liquid metal – cooled reactors that were the subject of evaluation by the three other TWGs.

From a list of 19 concepts recommended by the TWGs, and based on expressed interest by two or more countries, the GIF leadership selected six Gen IV concepts: Very High Temperature Gas Reactor (VHTR), Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR), Supercritical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR), Gas-cooled Fast Reactor (GFR), Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LCR), and Molten Salt Reactor (MSR).

As of 2008, 12 countries have signed the GIF Charter. Seven of those 12—Canada, China, France, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and the U.S.—and Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) have gone further and signed a Framework Agreement to participate in developing one or more Gen IV systems.

Considering all the technical, economic, and political facets of nuclear power around the world, the Gen IV process has been very successful. However, it is not on track to fulfill its main promise of making a more sustainable and economical generation of nuclear power plants available by 2030.