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. 2016 Jan;45 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S38-49.
doi: 10.1007/s13280-015-0732-y.

Nuclear power in the 21st century: Challenges and possibilities

Akos Horvath  1 , Elisabeth Rachlew  2
Affiliations

Nuclear power in the 21st century: Challenges and possibilities

Akos Horvath et al. Ambio. 2016 Jan.

Abstract

The current situation and possible future developments for nuclear power--including fission and fusion processes--is presented. The fission nuclear power continues to be an essential part of the low-carbon electricity generation in the world for decades to come. There are breakthrough possibilities in the development of new generation nuclear reactors where the life-time of the nuclear waste can be reduced to some hundreds of years instead of the present time-scales of hundred thousand of years. Research on the fourth generation reactors is needed for the realisation of this development. For the fast nuclear reactors, a substantial research and development effort is required in many fields--from material sciences to safety demonstration--to attain the envisaged goals. Fusion provides a long-term vision for an efficient energy production. The fusion option for a nuclear reactor for efficient production of electricity has been set out in a focussed European programme including the international project of ITER after which a fusion electricity DEMO reactor is envisaged.

Keywords: Fission; Fusion; Fusion plasma physics; Nuclear power; Nuclear waste; Reactor physics.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Total number of operating nuclear reactors worldwide. The total number of reactors also include six in Taiwan (source: IAEA 2015) (https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/nuclear-power)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Nuclear reactor generations from the pioneering age to the next decade (reproduced with permission from Ricotti 2013)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Radiotoxicity of radioactive waste
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Progress in fusion parameters. Derived in 1955, the Lawson criterion specifies the conditions that must be met for fusion to produce a net energy output (1 keV × 12 million K). From this, a fusion “triple product” can be derived, which is defined as the product of the plasma ion density, ion temperature and energy confinement time. This product must be greater than about 6 × 1021 keV m−3 s for a deuterium–tritium plasma to ignite. Due to the radioactivity associated with tritium, today’s research tokamaks generally operate with deuterium only (solid dots). The large tokamaks JET(EU) and TFTR(US), however, have used a deuterium–tritium mix (open dots). The rate of increase in tokamak performance has outstripped that of Moore’s law for the miniaturisation of silicon chips (Pitts et al. 2006). Many international projects (their names are given by acronyms in the figure) have contributed to the development of fusion plasma parameters and the progress in fusion research which serves as the basis for the ITER design
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Schematic layout of the ITER reactor experiment (from www.iter.org)
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Fusion time strategy towards the fusion reactor on the net (EFDA , Fusion electricity. A roadmap to the realisation of fusion energy)
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