Uranium-233 is produced by the neutronirradiation of thorium-232. When thorium-232 absorbs a neutron, it becomes thorium-233, which has a half-life of only 22 minutes. Thorium-233 decays into protactinium-233 through beta decay. Protactinium-233 has a half-life of 27 days and beta decays into uranium-233; some proposed molten salt reactor
designs attempt to physically isolate the protactinium from further
neutron capture before beta decay can occur, to maintain the neutron economy (if it misses the 233U window, the next fissile target is 235U, meaning a total of 4 neutrons needed to trigger fission).
233U usually fissions on neutron absorption, but sometimes retains the neutron, becoming uranium-234. The capture-to-fission ratio of uranium-233 is smaller than those of the other two major fissile fuels, uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
In 1946, the public first became informed of uranium-233 bred from
thorium as "a third available source of nuclear energy and atom bombs"
(in addition to uranium-235 and plutonium-239), following a United Nations report and a speech by Glenn T. Seaborg.
The United States produced, over the course of the Cold War, approximately 2 metric tons of uranium-233, in varying levels of chemical and isotopic purity. These were produced at the Hanford Site and Savannah River Site in reactors that were designed for the production of plutonium-239.
Nuclear fuel
Uranium-233 has been used as a fuel in several different reactor types, and is proposed as a fuel for several new designs, all of which breed it from thorium. Uranium-233 can be bred in either fast reactors or thermal reactors, unlike the uranium-238-based fuel cycles which require the superior neutron economy of a fast reactor in order to breed plutonium, that is, to produce more fissile material than is consumed.
The long-term strategy of the nuclear power program of India, which has substantial thorium reserves, is to move to a nuclear program breeding uranium-233 from thorium feedstock.
Energy released
The fission of one atom of uranium-233 generates 197.9 MeV = 3.171·10−11 J (i.e. 19.09 TJ/mol = 81.95 TJ/kg).
Source
Average energy released (MeV)
Instantaneously released energy
Kinetic energy of fission fragments
168.2
Kinetic energy of prompt neutrons
4.8
Energy carried by prompt γ-rays
7.7
Energy from decaying fission products
Energy of β−-particles
5.2
Energy of anti-neutrinos
6.9
Energy of delayed γ-rays
5.0
Sum(excluding escaping anti-neutrinos)
191.0
Energy released when those prompt neutrons which don't (re)produce fission are captured
9.1
Energy converted into heat in an operating thermal nuclear reactor
200.1
Weapon material
The first detonation of a nuclear bomb that included U-233, on 15 April 1955
As a potential weapon material, pure uranium-233 is more similar to
plutonium-239 than uranium-235 in terms of source (bred vs natural),
half-life and critical mass (both 4–5 kg in beryllium-reflected sphere).
In 1994, the US government declassified a 1966 memo that states
that uranium-233 has been shown to be highly satisfactory as a weapons
material, though it is only superior to plutonium in rare circumstances.
It was claimed that if the existing weapons were based on uranium-233
instead of plutonium-239, Livermore would not be interested in switching to plutonium.
The co-presence of uranium-232
can complicate the manufacture and use of uranium-233, though the
Livermore memo indicates a likelihood that this complication can be
worked around.
While it is thus possible to use uranium-233 as the fissile material of a nuclear weapon, speculation aside, there is scant publicly available information on this isotope actually having been weaponized:
The United States detonated an experimental device in the 1955 Operation Teapot "MET" test which used a plutonium/233U composite pit; its design was based on the plutonium/235U pit from the TX-7E, a prototype Mark 7 nuclear bomb design used in the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle "Easy" test. Although not an outright fizzle, MET's actual yield of 22 kilotons was sufficiently below the predicted 33 kt that the information gathered was of limited value.
The Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb the same year, the RDS-37, which contained a fissile core of 235U and 233U.
In 1998, as part of its Pokhran-II tests, India detonated an experimental 233U device of low-yield (0.2 kt) called Shakti V.
Overall the United States is thought to have produced two tons of 233U, of various levels of purity, some with 232U impurity content as low as 6 ppm.
232U impurity
Production of 233U (through the irradiation of thorium-232) invariably produces small amounts of uranium-232 as an impurity, because of parasitic (n,2n) reactions on uranium-233 itself, or on protactinium-233, or on thorium-232:
Another channel involves neutron capture reaction on small amounts of thorium-230, which is a tiny fraction of natural thorium present due to the decay of uranium-238:
The decay chain of 232U quickly yields strong gamma radiation emitters. Thallium-208 is the strongest of these, at 2.6 MeV:
232U (α, 68.9 y)
228Th (α, 1.9 y)
224Ra (α, 5.44 MeV, 3.6 d, with a γ of 0.24 MeV)
220Rn (α, 6.29 MeV, 56 s, with a γ of 0.54 MeV)
216Po (α, 0.15 s)
212Pb (β−, 10.64 h)
212Bi (α, 61 min, 0.78 MeV)
208Tl (β−, 1.8 MeV, 3 min, with a γ of 2.6 MeV)
208Pb (stable)
This makes manual handling in a glove box with only light shielding (as commonly done with plutonium)
too hazardous, (except possibly in a short period immediately following
chemical separation of the uranium from its decay products) and instead
requiring complex remote manipulation for fuel fabrication.
The hazards are significant even at 5 parts per million. Implosion nuclear weapons require 232U levels below 50 ppm (above which the 233U is considered "low grade"; cf. "Standard weapon grade plutonium requires a 240Pu content of no more than 6.5%." which is 65000 ppm, and the analogous 238Pu was produced in levels of 0.5% (5000 ppm) or less). Gun-type fission weapons additionally need low levels (1 ppm range) of light impurities, to keep the neutron generation low.
The production of "clean" 233U, low in 232U, requires a few factors: 1) obtaining a relatively pure 232Th source, low in 230Th (which also transmutes to 232U), 2) moderating the incident neutrons to have an energy not higher that 6 MeV (too-high energy neutrons cause the 232Th (n,2n) → 231Th reaction) and 3) removing the thorium sample from neutron flux before the 233U concentration builds up to a too high level, in order to avoid fissioning the 233U itself (which would produce energetic neutrons).
Thorium, from which 233U is bred, is roughly three to four times more abundant in the earth's crust than uranium.
The decay chain of 233U itself is part of the neptunium series, the decay chain of its grandparent 237Np.
Uses for uranium-233 include the production of the medical isotopes actinium-225 and bismuth-213 which are among its daughters, low-mass nuclear reactors for space travel applications, use as an isotopic tracer, nuclear weapons research, and reactor fuel research including the thorium fuel cycle.
The nuclear power debate is a long-running controversy about the risks and benefits of using nuclear reactors to generate electricity for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power
peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, as more and more reactors were built
and came online, and "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history
of technology controversies" in some countries. Thereafter, the nuclear industry created jobs, focused on safety, and public concerns mostly waned.
In the 2010+ decade, with growing public awareness about climate change
and the critical role that carbon dioxide and methane emissions plays
in causing the heating of the earth's atmosphere, there was a resurgence
in the intensity of the nuclear power debate. Nuclear power advocates
and those most concerned about climate change point to nuclear power's
reliable, emission-free, high-density energy, alongside a generation of
young physicists and engineers working to bring a new generation of
nuclear technology into existence to replace fossil fuels. On the other
hand, skeptics point to nuclear accidents such as the death of Louis Slotin, the Windscale fire, the Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, combined with escalating acts of global terrorism, to argue against continuing use of the technology.
Proponents of nuclear energy argue that nuclear power is a clean and sustainable energy source which provides huge amounts of uninterrupted energy without polluting the atmosphere or emitting the carbon emissions that cause global warming. Use of nuclear power provides plentiful, well-paying jobs, energy security,
reduces a dependence on imported fuels and exposure to price risks
associated with resource speculation and Middle East politics. Proponents advance the notion that nuclear power produces virtually no air pollution, in contrast to the massive amount of pollution and carbon emission generated from burning fossil fuels
like coal, oil and natural gas. Modern society demands always-on energy
to power communications, computer networks, transportation, industry
and residences at all times of day and night. In the absence of nuclear
power, utilities need to burn fossil fuels to keep the energy grid
reliable, even with access to solar and wind energy, because those
sources are intermittent. Proponents also believe that nuclear power is
the only viable course for a country to achieve energy independence
while also meeting their "ambitious" Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement signed by 195 nations. They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and existing stockpiles can be reduced by using this waste
to produce fuels for the latest technology in newer reactors. The
operational safety record of nuclear is excellent when compared to the
other major kinds of power plants and by preventing pollution, actually saves lives every year.
Opponents
say that nuclear power poses numerous threats to people and the
environment and point to studies in the literature that question if it
will ever be a sustainable energy source. These threats include health risks, accidents and environmental damage from uranium mining, processing and transport. Along with the fears associated with nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear power opponents fear sabotage by terrorists
of nuclear plants, diversion and misuse of radioactive fuels or fuel
waste, as well as naturally-occurring leakage from the unsolved and
imperfect long-term storage process of radioactive nuclear waste.
They also contend that reactors themselves are enormously complex
machines where many things can and do go wrong, and there have been many
serious nuclear accidents. Critics do not believe that these risks can be reduced through new technology. They further argue that when all the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered, from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning, nuclear power is not a low-carbon electricity source.
History
Stewart Brand at a 2010 debate, "Does the world need nuclear energy?"
At the 1963 ground-breaking for what would become the world's largest nuclear power plant, President John F. Kennedy
declared that nuclear power was a "step on the long road to peace," and
that by using "science and technology to achieve significant
breakthroughs" that we could "conserve the resources" to leave the world
in better shape. Yet he also acknowledged that the Atomic Age was a
"dreadful age" and "when we broke the atom apart, we changed the history
of the world."
Electricity and energy supplied
The World Nuclear Association
has reported that nuclear electricity generation in 2012 was at its
lowest level since 1999. The WNA has said that "nuclear power
generation suffered its biggest ever one-year fall through 2012 as the
bulk of the Japanese fleet remained offline for a full calendar year".
Data from the International Atomic Energy Agency
showed that nuclear power plants globally produced 2,346 terawatt-hours
(8,450 PJ) of electricity in 2012 – 7% less than in 2011. The figures
illustrate the effects of a full year of 48 Japanese power reactors
producing no power during the year. The permanent closure of eight
reactor units in Germany was also a factor. Problems at Crystal River, Fort Calhoun and the two San Onofre
units in the USA meant they produced no power for the full year, while
in Belgium Doel 3 and Tihange 2 were out of action for six months.
Compared to 2010, the nuclear industry produced 11% less electricity in
2012.
Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands,
Spain and the U.K. now all generate more electricity from non-hydro
renewable energy than from nuclear sources. In 2015, new power
generation using solar power was 33% of the global total, wind power over 17%, and 1.3% for nuclear power, exclusively due to development in China.
Energy security
For some countries, nuclear power affords energy independence. Nuclear power has been relatively unaffected by embargoes, and uranium is mined in countries willing to export, including Australia and Canada.
However, countries now responsible for more than 30% of the world's
uranium production: Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger, and Uzbekistan, are
politically unstable.
One assessment from the IAEA showed that enough high-grade ore
exists to supply the needs of the current reactor fleet for 40–50 years.
According to Sovacool (2011), reserves from existing uranium mines are
being rapidly depleted, and expected shortfalls in available fuel
threaten future plants and contribute to volatility of uranium prices at
existing plants. Escalation of uranium fuel costs decreased the
viability of nuclear projects. Uranium prices rose from 2001 to 2007, before declining.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD, in their latest review of world uranium resources and demand, Uranium 2014: Resources, Production, and Demand,
concluded that uranium resources would support "significant growth in
nuclear capacity," and that: "Identified resources are sufficient for
over 120 years, considering 2012 uranium requirements of 61 600 tU."
According to a Stanford study, fast breeder reactors have the potential to provide power for humans on earth for billions of years, making this source sustainable.
But "because of the link between plutonium and nuclear weapons, the
potential application of fast breeders has led to concerns that nuclear
power expansion would bring in an era of uncontrolled weapons proliferation".
Reliability
The United States fleet of nuclear reactors produced 800 TWh zero-emissions electricity in 2019 with an average capacity factor of 92%.
In 2010, the worldwide average capacity factor was 80.1%. In 2005, the global average capacity factor was 86.8%, the number of SCRAMs per 7,000 hours critical was 0.6, and the unplanned capacity loss factor was 1.6%.
Capacity factor is the net power produced divided by the maximum amount
possible running at 100% all the time, thus this includes all scheduled
maintenance/refueling outages as well as unplanned losses. The
7,000 hours is roughly representative of how long any given reactor will
remain critical in a year, meaning that the scram rates translates into
a sudden and unplanned shutdown about 0.6 times per year for any given
reactor in the world. The unplanned capacity loss factor represents
amount of power not produced due to unplanned scrams and postponed
restarts.
According to World Nuclear Association "Sun, wind, tides and waves cannot be controlled to provide directly either continuous base-load
power, or peak-load power when it is needed,..." "In practical terms
non-hydro renewables are therefore able to supply up to some 15–20% of
the capacity of an electricity grid, though they cannot directly be
applied as economic substitutes for most coal or nuclear power, however
significant they become in particular areas with favourable conditions."
"If the fundamental opportunity of these renewables is their abundance
and relatively widespread occurrence, the fundamental challenge,
especially for electricity supply, is applying them to meet demand given
their variable and diffuse nature. This means either that there must be
reliable duplicate sources of electricity beyond the normal system
reserve, or some means of electricity storage." "Relatively few places
have scope for pumped storage
dams close to where the power is needed, and overall efficiency is less
than 80%. Means of storing large amounts of electricity as such in
giant batteries or by other means have not been developed."
According to Benjamin K. Sovacool,
most studies critiquing solar and wind energy look only at individual
generators and not at the system wide effects of solar and wind farms.
Correlations between power swings drop substantially as more solar and wind farms are integrated (a process known as geographical smoothing) and a wider geographic area also enables a larger pool of energy efficiency efforts to abate intermittency.
Sovacool says that variable renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar energy can displace nuclear resources.
"Nine recent studies have concluded that the variability and
intermittency of wind and solar resources becomes easier to manage the
more they are deployed and interconnected, not the other way around, as
some utilities suggest. This is because wind and solar plants help grid
operators handle major outages and contingencies elsewhere in the
system, since they generate power in smaller increments that are less
damaging than unexpected outages from large plants".
As of 2013, the World Nuclear Association
has said "There is unprecedented interest in renewable energy,
particularly solar and wind energy, which provide electricity without
giving rise to any carbon dioxide emission. Harnessing these for
electricity depends on the cost and efficiency of the technology, which
is constantly improving, thus reducing costs per peak kilowatt."
Renewable electricity supply in the 20-50+% range has already
been implemented in several European systems, albeit in the context of
an integrated European grid system.
In 2012 the share of electricity generated by renewable sources in
Germany was 21.9%, compared to 16.0% for nuclear power after Germany
shut down 7–8 of its 18 nuclear reactors in 2011.
In the United Kingdom, the amount of energy produced from renewable
energy is expected to exceed that from nuclear power by 2018, and Scotland plans to obtain all electricity from renewable energy by 2020. The majority of installed renewable energy across the world is in the form of hydro power, which has limited opportunity for expansion.
The IPCC has said that if governments were supportive, and the full complement of renewable energy technologies were deployed, renewable energy supply could account for almost 80% of the world's energy use within forty years. Rajendra K. Pachauri,
chairman of the IPCC, said the necessary investment in renewables would
cost only about 1% of global GDP annually. This approach could contain
greenhouse gas levels to less than 450 parts per million, the safe level
beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.
The cost of nuclear power has followed an increasing trend whereas the cost of electricity is declining in wind power. As of 2014, the wind industry in the USA
is able to produce more power at lower cost by using taller wind
turbines with longer blades, capturing the faster winds at higher
elevations. This has opened up new opportunities and in Indiana,
Michigan, and Ohio, the price of power from wind turbines built 300 feet
to 400 feet above the ground can now compete with conventional fossil
fuels like coal. Prices have fallen to about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour
in some cases and utilities have been increasing the amount of wind
energy in their portfolio, saying it is their cheapest option.
From a safety stand point, nuclear power, in terms of lives lost
per unit of electricity delivered, is comparable to and in some cases,
lower than many renewable energy sources. There is no radioactive spent fuel that needs to be stored or reprocessed with conventional renewable energy sources although renewable energy sources require rare-earth elements
which need to be mined producing low-level radioactive waste. A nuclear
plant needs to be disassembled and removed. Much of the disassembled
nuclear plant needs to be stored as low level nuclear waste.
Since nuclear power plants are fundamentally heat engines, waste heat disposal becomes an issue at high ambient temperature.
Droughts and extended periods of high temperature can "cripple nuclear
power generation, and it is often during these times when electricity
demand is highest because of air-conditioning and refrigeration loads
and diminished hydroelectric capacity". In such very hot weather a power reactor may have to operate at a reduced power level or even shut down.
In 2009 in Germany, eight nuclear reactors had to be shut down
simultaneously on hot summer days for reasons relating to the
overheating of equipment or of rivers.
Overheated discharge water has resulted in significant killing of fish
in the past, harming livelihood and raising public concern. This issue applies equally to all thermal power plants including fossil-gas, coal and nuclear.
Economics
New nuclear plants
EDF has said its third-generation EPR Flamanville 3 project
(seen here in 2010) will be delayed until 2018, due to "both structural
and economic reasons," and the project's total cost has climbed to EUR
11 billion in 2012. Similarly, the cost of the EPR being built at Olkiluoto, Finland has escalated dramatically, and the project is well behind schedule. The initial low cost forecasts for these megaprojects exhibited "optimism bias".
The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject,
since there are diverging views on this topic, and multibillion-dollar
investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants
typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low
direct fuel costs (with much of the costs of fuel extraction,
processing, use and long-term storage externalized). Therefore,
comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on
assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for
nuclear plants. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs. On the other hand, measures to mitigateglobal warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.
In recent years there has been a slowdown of electricity demand
growth and financing has become more difficult, which impairs large
projects such as nuclear reactors, with very large upfront costs and
long project cycles which carry a large variety of risks.
In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling
to find finance, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors
at Cernavoda in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out. The reliable availability of cheap gas poses a major economic disincentive for nuclear projects.
Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must take into account
who bears the risks of future uncertainties. To date all operating
nuclear power plants were developed by state-owned or regulatedutility monopolies
where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating
performance, fuel price, and other factors were borne by consumers
rather than suppliers. Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market
where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before
capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators
rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different
evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.
Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster,
costs are likely to go up for currently operating and new nuclear power
plants, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management
and elevated design basis threats.
New nuclear power plants require significant upfront investment
which was so far mostly caused by highly customized designs of large
plants but can be driven down by standardized, reusable designs (as did
South Korea).
While new nuclear power plants are more expensive than new renewable
energy in upfront investment, the cost of the latter is expected to grow
as the grid is saturated with intermittent sources and energy storage
as well as land usage becomes a primary barrier to their expansion. A fleet of Small Modular Reactors
can be also significantly cheaper than an equivalent single
conventional size reactor due to standardized design and much smaller
complexity.
In 2020 International Energy Agency called for creation of a
global nuclear power licensing framework as in the existing legal
situation each plant design needs to be licensed separately in each
country.
Cost of decommissioning nuclear plants
The price of energy inputs and the environmental costs of every
nuclear power plant continue long after the facility has finished
generating its last useful electricity. Both nuclear reactors and
uranium enrichment facilities must be decommissioned,
returning the facility and its parts to a safe enough level to be
entrusted for other uses. After a cooling-off period that may last as
long as a century,
reactors must be dismantled and cut into small pieces to be packed in
containers for final disposal. The process is very expensive,
time-consuming, potentially hazardous to the natural environment, and
presents new opportunities for human error, accidents or sabotage.
However, despite these risks, according to the World Nuclear
Association, "In over 50 years of civil nuclear power experience, the
management and disposal of civil nuclear waste has not caused any
serious health or environmental problems, nor posed any real risk to the
general public."
The total energy required for decommissioning can be as much as 50% more than the energy needed for the original construction. In most cases, the decommissioning process costs between US$300 million to US$5.6 billion.
Decommissioning at nuclear sites which have experienced a serious
accident are the most expensive and time-consuming. In the U.S. there
are 13 reactors that have permanently shut down and are in some phase of
decommissioning, and none of them have completed the process.
Current UK plants are expected to exceed £73 billion in decommissioning costs.
Subsidies
George W. Bush signing the Energy Policy Act of 2005,
which was designed to promote US nuclear reactor construction, through
incentives and subsidies, including cost-overrun support up to a total
of $2 billion for six new nuclear plants.
U.S. 2014 Electricity Generation By Type.
Critics of nuclear power claim that it is the beneficiary of inappropriately large economic subsidies,
taking the form of research and development, financing support for
building new reactors and decommissioning old reactors and waste, and
that these subsidies are often overlooked when comparing the economics
of nuclear against other forms of power generation.
Nuclear power proponents argue that competing energy sources also
receive subsidies. Fossil fuels receive large direct and indirect
subsidies, such as tax benefits and not having to pay for the greenhouse gases they emit, such as through a carbon tax.
Renewable energy sources receive proportionately large direct
production subsidies and tax breaks in many nations, although in
absolute terms they are often less than subsidies received by
non-renewable energy sources.
In Europe, the FP7
research program has more subsidies for nuclear power than for
renewable and energy efficiency together; over 70% of this is directed
at the ITERfusion project. In the US, public research money for nuclear fission declined from 2,179 to 35 million dollars between 1980 and 2000.
A 2010 report by Global Subsidies Initiative compared relative
subsidies of most common energy sources. It found that nuclear energy
receives 1.7 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of energy it produces,
compared to fossil fuels receiving 0.8 US cents per kWh, renewable
energy receiving 5.0 US cents per kWh and biofuels receiving 5.1 US
cents per kWh.
Carbon taxation is a significant positive driver in the economy
of both nuclear plants and renewable energy sources, all of which are
low emissions in their life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions.
In 2019 a heated debate happened in the European Union on creation of a "green finance taxonomy" list intended to create investment opportunities for zero-emission energy technologies. Initially the basic criterion for inclusion was life-cycle emissions at 100 gCO2eq/kWh or less which would include nuclear power which falls well under this threshold (12). Under lobbying from European Greens and Germany
an additional "do no harm" criterion was introduced specifically to
exclude nuclear power which in their intention should exclude nuclear
power from the list.
In July 2020 W. Gyude Moore, former Liberia's
Minister for Public Works, called international bodies to start (or
restart) funding for nuclear projects in Africa, following the example
of US Development Finance Corporation. Moore accused high-income
countries like Germany and Australia of "hypocrisy" and "pulling up the
ladder behind them", as they have built their strong economy over
decades of cheap fossil or nuclear power, and now are effectively
preventing African countries from using the only low-carbon and
non-intermittent alternative, the nuclear power.
Also in July 2020 Hungary declared its nuclear power will be used as low-emission source of energy to produce hydrogen, while Czechia began the process of approval of public loan to CEZ nuclear power station.
Indirect nuclear insurance subsidy
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
has said "if reactors were safe, nuclear industries would not demand
government-guaranteed, accident-liability protection, as a condition for
their generating electricity".
No private insurance company or even consortium of insurance companies
"would shoulder the fearsome liabilities arising from severe nuclear
accidents".
The potential costs resulting from a nuclear accident
(including one caused by a terrorist attack or a natural disaster) are
great. The liability of owners of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is
currently limited under the Price-Anderson Act
(PAA). The Price-Anderson Act, introduced in 1957, was "an implicit
admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were
unwilling to assume without federal backing".
The Price-Anderson Act "shields nuclear utilities, vendors and
suppliers against liability claims in the event of a catastrophic
accident by imposing an upper limit on private sector liability".
Without such protection, private companies were unwilling to be
involved. No other technology in the history of American industry has
enjoyed such continuing blanket protection.
The PAA was due to expire in 2002, and the former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney said in 2001 that "nobody's going to invest in nuclear power plants" if the PAA is not renewed.
In 1983, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(USNRC) concluded that the liability limits placed on nuclear insurance
were significant enough to constitute a subsidy, but did not attempt to
quantify the value of such a subsidy at that time.
Shortly after this in 1990, Dubin and Rothwell were the first to
estimate the value to the U.S. nuclear industry of the limitation on
liability for nuclear power plants under the Price Anderson Act. Their
underlying method was to extrapolate the premiums operators currently
pay versus the full liability they would have to pay for full insurance
in the absence of the PAA limits. The size of the estimated subsidy per
reactor per year was $60 million prior to the 1982 amendments, and up to
$22 million following the 1988 amendments. In a separate article in 2003, Anthony Heyes updates the 1988 estimate of $22 million per year to $33 million (2001 dollars).
In case of a nuclear accident, should claims exceed this primary
liability, the PAA requires all licensees to additionally provide a
maximum of $95.8 million into the accident pool – totaling roughly $10
billion if all reactors were required to pay the maximum. This is still
not sufficient in the case of a serious accident, as the cost of damages
could exceed $10 billion.
According to the PAA, should the costs of accident damages exceed the
$10 billion pool, the process for covering the remainder of the costs
would be defined by Congress. In 1982, a Sandia National Laboratories
study concluded that depending on the reactor size and 'unfavorable
conditions' a serious nuclear accident could lead to property damages as
high as $314 billion while fatalities could reach 50,000.
Environmental effects
Nuclear generation does not directly produce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, mercury or other pollutants associated with the combustion of
fossil fuels. Nuclear power has also very high surface power density,
which means much less space is used to produce the same amount of
energy (thousands times less when compared to wind or solar power).
The primary environmental effects of nuclear power come from uranium mining, radioactive effluent emissions, and waste heat. Nuclear industry, including all past nuclear weapon testing and nuclear accidents, contributes less than 1% of the overall background radiation globally.
A 2014 multi-criterion analysis of impact factors critical for
biodiversity, economic and environmental sustainability indicated that
nuclear and wind power have the best benefit-to-cost ratios and called
environmental movements to reconsider their position on nuclear power
and evidence-based policy making. In 2013 an open-letter with the same message signed by climate scientists Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel, James Hansen, Tom Wigley and then co-signed by many others.
Resources usage in uranium mining is 840 m3 of water (up to 90% of the water is recycled) and 30 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of uranium mined. Energy return on investment (EROEI) for a PWR nuclear power plant ranges from 75 to 100 meaning total energy invested in the power plant is returned in 2 months. Median life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of nuclear power plant are 12 gCO2eq/kWh. Both indicators are one of the most competitive of all available energy sources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) recognizes nuclear as one of the lowest lifecycle emissions
energy sources available, lower than solar, and only bested by wind. The US National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) also cites nuclear as a very low lifecycle emissions source.
In terms of life-cycle surface power density (land surface area used per power output), nuclear power has median density of 240 W/m2, which is 34x more than solar power (6.63 W/m2) and 130x more than wind power (1.84 W/m2)
meaning than when the same power output is to be provided by nuclear or
renewable sources, the latter are going to use tens to hundreds times
more land surface for the same amount of power produced.
Greenpeace
and some other environmental organizations have been criticized for
distributing claims about CO2 emissions from nuclear power that are
unsupported by the scientific data. Their influence has been attributed
to "shocking" results of 2020 poll in France, where 69% of the
respondents believed that nuclear power contributes to climate change. Greenpeace Australia for example claimed that "there’s no significant savings on carbon output" in nuclear power, which directly contradicts the IPCC life-cycle analysis. In 2018 Greenpeace Spain ignored conclusions from a report by University of Comillas
report it procured, showing the lowest CO2 emissions in scenarios
involving nuclear power, and instead supported an alternative scenario
involving fossil fuels, with much higher emissions.
Life-cycle land usage by nuclear power (including mining and waste storage, direct and indirect) is 100 m2/GWh which is ½ of solar power and 1/10 of wind power. Space usage is the main reason for opposition against on-shore wind farms.
In June 2020 Zion Lights, spokesperson of Extinction Rebellion UK
declared her support for nuclear energy as critical part of the energy
mix along with renewable energy sources and called fellow
environmentalists to accept that nuclear power is part of the
"scientifically assessed solutions for addressing climate change".
In July 2020 Good Energy Collective, the first women-only
pressure group advocating nuclear power as part of the climate change
mitigation solutions was formed in the US.
In March 2021, 46 environmental organizations from European Union wrote
an open letter to the President of the European Commission calling to
increase share of nuclear power as the most effective way of reducing
EU's reliance on fossil fuels. The letter also condemned "multi-facetted
misrepresentation" and "rigged information about nuclear, with opinion
driven by fear" which results in shutting down of stable, low-carbon
nuclear power plants.
EU Taxonomy
A comprehensive debate on the role of nuclear power continues since 2020 as part of regulatory work on European Union Taxonomy of environmentally sustainable technologies.
Low carbon intensity of nuclear power was not disputed, but opponents
raised nuclear waste and thermal pollution as not sustainable element
that should exclude it from the sustainable taxonomy. Detailed technical
analysis was delegated to the European CommissionJoint Research Centre
(JRC) which looked at all potential issues of nuclear power from
scientific, engineering and regulatory point of view and in March 2021
published a 387-page report which concluded:
The analyses did not reveal any
science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human
health or to the environment than other electricity production
technologies already included in the Taxonomy as activities
supporting climate change mitigation.
— Technical
assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the ‘do no significant
harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’)
The EU tasked two further expert commissions to validate JRC findings — the Euratom
Article 31 expert group on radiation protection and SCHEER (Scientific
Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks). Both groups
published their reports in July 2021, largely confirming JRC
conclusions, with a number of topics that require further investigation.
The SCHEER is of the opinion
that the findings and recommendations of the report with respect of the
non-radiological impacts are in the main comprehensive. (...) The
SCHEER broadly agrees with these statements, however, the SCHEER is of
the view that dependence on an operational regulatory framework is
not in itself sufficient to mitigate these impacts,e.g. inmining and
millingwhere the burden of the impacts are felt outside Europe.
— SCHEER
review of the JRC report on Technical assessment of nuclear energy with
respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU)
2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’)
SCHEER also pointed out that JRC conclusion that nuclear power "does
less harm" as the other (e.g. renewable) technologies against which it
was compared is not entirely equivalent to the "do no significant harm"
criterion postulated by the taxonomy. The JRC analysis of thermal pollution doesn't fully take into account limited water mixing in shallow waters.
The Article 31 group confirmed JRC findings:
The conclusions of the JRC
report are based on well-established results of scientific
research, reviewed in detail by internationally recognised
organisations and committees.
— Opinion
of the Group of Experts referred to in Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty
on the Joint Research Centre’s Report Technical assessment of nuclear
energy with respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of
Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’)
Also in July 2021 a group of 87 members of European Parliament signed an open letter calling European Commission
to include nuclear power in the sustainable taxonomy following
favourable scientific reports, and warned against anti-nuclear coalition
that "ignore scientific conclusions and actively oppose nuclear power".
Effect on greenhouse gas emissions
According to Sovacool (2008), nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g (2.3 oz) equivalent lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce electricity with 9.5–38 g (0.34–1.34 oz) carbon dioxide per kWh. A 2012 study by Yale University
disputed this estimate, and found that the mean value from nuclear
power ranged from 11–25 g/kWh (0.11–0.24 oz/MJ) of total life cycle CO2 emissions
Energy-related
CO2 emissions in France at 52 gCO2eq/kWh are among the lowest in Europe
thanks to large share of nuclear power and renewable energy. Countries
with large share of renewable energy and low nuclear, such as Germany
and UK, frequently provide baseload using fossil fuels with emissions 5x
higher than France.
An average nuclear power plant prevents emission of 2,000,000 metric tons of CO2, 5,200 metric tons of SO2 and 2,200 metric tons of NOx in a year as compared to an average fossil fuel plant.
While nuclear power does not directly emit greenhouse gases,
emissions occur, as with every source of energy, over a facility's life
cycle: mining and fabrication of construction materials, plant
construction, operation, uranium mining and milling, and plant
decommissioning.
A literature survey by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
of 32 greenhouse gas emissions studies, found a median value of 16 g
(0.56 oz) equivalent lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt
hour (kWh) for nuclear power, being one of the lowest among all energy
sources and comparable only with wind power.
Renewables
like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future
energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to
deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy
requires. While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the
climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible
path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role
for nuclear power.
The statement was widely discussed in the scientific community, with voices both against and in favor. It has been also postulated that the life-cycle CO2
emissions of nuclear power high-grade uranium ore is used up and
low-grade uranium needs to be mined and milled using fossil fuels.
As the nuclear power debate continues, greenhouse gas emissions
are increasing. Predictions estimate that even with draconian emission
reductions within the ten years, the world will still pass 650 ppm of carbon dioxide and a catastrophic 4 °C (7.2 °F) average rise in temperature.
Public perception is that renewable energies such as wind, solar,
biomass and geothermal are significantly affecting global warming. All of these sources combined only supplied 1.3% of global energy in 2013 as 8 billion tonnes (1.8×1013 lb) of coal was burned annually. This "too little, too late" effort may be a mass form of climate change denial, or an idealistic pursuit of green energy.
In 2015 an open letter from 65 leading biologists worldwide
described nuclear power as one of the energy sources that are the most
friendly to biodiversity due to its high energy density and low environmental footprint:
Much as leading climate scientists
have recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear
energy systems to combat climate change, we entreat the conservation
and environmental community to weigh up the pros and cons of different
energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather
than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is 'green'.
— Brave New Climate open letter
In response to 2016 Paris Agreement a number of countries explicitly listed nuclear power as part of their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In June 2019, an open letter to "the leadership and people of Germany",
written by almost 100 Polish environmentalists and scientist, urged
Germany to "reconsider the decision on the final decommissioning of
fully functional nuclear power plants" for the benefit of the fight
against global warming.
In 2020 a group of European scientists published an open letter
to the European Commission calling for inclusion of nuclear power as
"element of stability in carbon-free Europe".
Also in 2020 a coalition of 30 European nuclear industry companies and
research bodies published an open letter highlighting that nuclear power
remains the largest single source of zero-emissions energy in European
Union.
In 2021 UNECE described suggested pathways of building sustainable energy supply with increased role of low-carbon nuclear power. In April 2021 US President's Joe Biden Infrastructure Plan called for 100% of US electricity being generated from low-carbon sources of which nuclear power would be a significant component.
IEA
"Net Zero by 2050" pathways published in 2021 assume growth of nuclear
power capacity by 104% accompanied by 714% growth of renewable energy
sources, mostly solar power. In June 2021 over 100 organisations published a position paper for the COP26
climate conference highlighting the fact that nuclear power is
low-carbon despatchable energy source that has been the most successful
in reducing CO 2 emissions from the energy sector.
High-level radioactive waste
Spent nuclear fuel stored underwater and uncapped at the Hanford site in Washington, USA.
The world's nuclear fleet creates about 10,000 metric tons (22,000,000 pounds) of high-level spent nuclear fuel each year. High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive
materials created during production of nuclear power. This requires the
use of "geological disposal", or burial, due to the extremely long
periods of time that radioactive waste remain deadly to living organisms. Of particular concern are two long-lived fission products, technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent nuclear fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years).
However, many nuclear power by-products are usable as nuclear fuel
themselves; extracting the usable energy producing contents from nuclear
waste is called "nuclear recycling". About 80% of the byproducts can be reprocessed and recycled back into nuclear fuel,
negating this effect. The remaining high-level radioactive waste
requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate
it from the biosphere.
This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management
strategy involving permanent storage, disposal or transformation of the
waste into a non-toxic form.
Governments around the world are considering a range of waste
management and disposal options, usually involving deep-geologic
placement, although there has been limited progress toward implementing
long-term waste management solutions. This is partly because the timeframes in question when dealing with radioactive waste range from 10,000 to millions of years, according to studies based on the effect of estimated radiation doses.
Since the fraction of a radioisotope's
atoms decaying per unit of time is inversely proportional to its
half-life, the relative radioactivity of a quantity of buried human radioactive waste would diminish over time compared to natural radioisotopes (such as the decay chain of 120 trillion tons of thorium and 40 trillion tons of uranium which are at relatively trace concentrations of parts per million each over the crust's 3×1019 ton mass).
For instance, over a timeframe of thousands of years, after the
most active short half-life radioisotopes decayed, burying U.S. nuclear
waste would increase the radioactivity in the top 2,000 feet (610 m) of
rock and soil in the United States (100 million km2 or 39 million sq mi) by approximately 0.1 parts per million over the cumulative amount of natural radioisotopes
in such a volume, although the vicinity of the site would have a far
higher concentration of artificial radioisotopes underground than such
an average.
Nuclear waste disposal is one of the most controversial facets of
the nuclear power debate. Presently, waste is mainly stored at
individual reactor sites and there are over 430 locations around the
world where radioactive material continues to accumulate.
Experts agree that centralized underground repositories which are
well-managed, guarded, and monitored, would be a vast improvement. There is an international consensus on the advisability of storing nuclear waste in deep underground repositories, but no country in the world has yet opened such a site as of 2009. There are dedicated waste storage sites at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and two in German salt mines, the Morsleben Repository and the Schacht Asse II.
Public debate on the subject frequently focuses of nuclear waste only, ignoring the fact that existing deep geologic repositories
globally (including Canada and Germany) already exist and store highly
toxic waste such as arsenic, mercury and cyanide, which, unlike nuclear
waste, does not lose toxicity over time.
Numerous media reports about alleged "radioactive leaks" from nuclear
storage sites in Germany also confused waste from nuclear plants with
low-level medical waste (such as irradiated X-ray plates and devices).
Management of radioactive waste and
its safe and secure disposal is a necessary step in the lifecycle of
all applications of nuclear science and technology (nuclear energy,
research, industry, education, medical, and other). Radioactive waste is
therefore generated in practically every country, the largest
contribution coming from the nuclear energy lifecycle in countries
operating nuclear power plants. Presently, there is broad scientific and
technical consensus that disposal of high-level, long-lived radioactive
waste in deep geologic formations is, at the state of today’s
knowledge, considered as an appropriate and safe means of isolating it
from the biosphere for very long time scales.
Prevented mortality
In March 2013, climate scientists Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen published a paper in Environmental Science & Technology, entitled Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power.
It estimated an average of 1.8 million lives saved worldwide by the use
of nuclear power instead of fossil fuels between 1971 and 2009. The
paper examined mortality levels per unit of electrical energy produced
from fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) as well as nuclear power.
Kharecha and Hansen assert that their results are probably conservative,
as they analyze only deaths and do not include a range of serious but
non-fatal respiratory illnesses, cancers, hereditary effects and heart
problems, nor do they include the fact that fossil fuel combustion in
developing countries tends to have a higher carbon and air pollution
footprint than in developed countries. The authors also conclude that the emission of some 64 billiontonnes (7.1×1010tons)
of carbon dioxide equivalent have been avoided by nuclear power between
1971 and 2009, and that between 2010 and 2050, nuclear power could
additionally avoid up to 80–240 billion tonnes (8.8×1010–2.65×1011 tons).
A 2020 study on Energiewende
found that if Germany had postponed the nuclear phase out and phased
out coal first it could have saved 1,100 lives and $12 billion in social
costs per year.
In 2020 the Vatican has praised "peaceful nuclear technologies"
as significant factor to "alleviation of poverty and the ability of
countries to meet their development goals in a sustainable way".
Accidents and safety
EU JRC
study in 2021 compared actual and potential fatality rates for
different energy generation technologies based on The Energy-Related
Severe Accident Database (ENSAD). Due to the fact that actual nuclear
accidents were very few as compared to technologies such as coal or
fossil gas, there was an additional modelling applied using Probabilistic Safety Assessment
(PSA) methodology to estimate and quantify the risk of hypothetical
sever nuclear accidents in future. The analysis looked at Generation II
reactors (PWR) and Generation III (EPR)
reactors, and estimated two metrics — fatality rate per GWh (reflecting
casualties related to normal operations), and a maximum credible number
of casualties in a single hypothetical accident, reflecting general
risk aversion. In respect to the fatality rate per GWh in Generation II
reactors it made the following conclusion:
With regard to the first
metric, fatality rates, the results indicate that current
Generation II nuclear power plants have a very low fatality
rate compared to all forms of fossil fuel energies and
comparable with hydropower in OECD countries and wind power. Only
Solar energy has significantly lower fatality rates. (...) Operating
nuclear power plants are subject to continuous improvement. As a
result of lessons learned from operating experience, the
development of scientific knowledge, or as safety standards are
updated, reasonably practicable safety improvements are
implemented at existing nuclear power plants.
In respect to fatality rate per GWh Generation III (EPR) reactors:
Generation III nuclear power
plants are designed fully in accordance with the latest
international safety standards that have been continually updated
to take account of advancement in knowledge and of the
lessons learned from operating experience, including major events
like the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and
Fukushima. The latest standards include extended requirements
related to severe accident prevention and mitigation. The range
of postulated initiating events taken into account in the
design of the plant has been expanded to include, in a systematic
way, multiple equipment failures and other very unlikely events,
resulting in a very high level of prevention of accidents leading to
melting of the fuel. Despite the high level of prevention of core melt
accidents, the design must be such as to ensure the capability to
mitigate the consequences of severe degradation of the reactor core. For
this, it is necessary to postulate a representative set of core melt
accident sequences that will be used to design mitigating features to be
implemented in theplant design to ensure the protection of the
containment function and avoid large or early radioactive
releases into the environment. According to WENRA [3.5-3], the objective
is to ensure that even in the worst case, the impact of any radioactive
releases to the environment would be limited to within a few km of the
site boundary.
These latest requirements are reflected in the very low
fatality rate for the Generation III European Pressurised-water
Reactor (EPR) given in figure 3.5-1. The fatality rate associated with
future nuclear energy are the lowest of all the technologies.
The second estimate, the maximum casualties in the worst case
scenario, is much higher, and likelihood of such accident is estimated
at 10-10 per reactor year, or once in a ten billion years:
The maximum credible number of
fatalities from a hypothetical nuclear accident at a Generation
III NPP calculated by Hirschberg et al [3.5-1] is comparable
with the corresponding number for hydroelectricity generation,
which is in the region of 10,000 fatalities due to
hypothetical dam failure. In this case, the fatalities are all or
mostly immediate fatalities and are calculated to have a higher
frequency of occurrence.
The JRC report notes that "such a number of fatalities, even if based
on very pessimistic assumptions, has an impact on public perception due
to disaster (or risk) aversion", explaining that general public
attributes higher apparent importance to low-frequency events with
higher number of casualties, while even much higher numbers of
casualties but evenly spread over time are not perceived as equally
important. In comparison, in the EU over 400'000 premature deaths per
year are attributed to air pollution, and 480'000 premature deaths per
year for smokers and 40'000 of non-smokers per year as result of tobacco
in the US.
The effect of nuclear accidents has been a topic of debate practically since the first nuclear reactors were constructed. It has also been a key factor in public concern about nuclear facilities. Some technical measures to reduce the risk of accidents or to minimize the amount of radioactivity
released to the environment have been adopted. As such, deaths caused
by these accidents are minimal, to the point at which the Fukushima
evacuation efforts caused an estimated 32 times the number of deaths
caused by the accident itself, with 1,000 to 1,600 deaths from the
evacuation, and 40 to 50 deaths coming from the accident itself.
Despite the use of such safety measures, "there have been many
accidents with varying effects as well near misses and incidents".
Nuclear power plants are a complex energy system and opponents of nuclear power have criticized the sophistication and complexity of the technology. Helen Caldicott
has said: "... in essence, a nuclear reactor is just a very
sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water – analogous to cutting a
pound of butter with a chain saw." The 1979 Three Mile Island accident inspired Charles Perrow's book Normal Accidents, where a nuclear accident
occurs, resulting from an unanticipated interaction of multiple
failures in a complex system. TMI was an example of a normal accident
because it was deemed "unexpected, incomprehensible, uncontrollable and
unavoidable".
Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a
consequence of the system's immense complexity. Such modern high-risk
systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were
managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he
termed a 'normal accident'. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better
to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to
abandon such technology entirely. These concerns have been addressed by modern passive safety systems, which require no human intervention to function.
Catastrophic scenarios involving terrorist attacks are also conceivable. An interdisciplinary team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) has estimated that given a three-fold increase in nuclear power
from 2005 to 2055, and an unchanged accident frequency, four core damage
accidents would be expected in that period.
Proponents of nuclear power argue that in comparison to other
sources of power, nuclear power is (along with solar and wind energy)
among the safest,
accounting for all the risks from mining to production to storage,
including the risks of spectacular nuclear accidents. Accidents in the
nuclear industry have been less damaging than accidents in the hydroelectric power industry, and less damaging than the constant, incessant damage from air pollutants from fossil fuels. For instance, by running a 1000-MWe
nuclear power plant including uranium mining, reactor operation and
waste disposal, the radiation dose is 136 person-rem/year, while the
dose is 490 person-rem/year for an equivalent coal-fired power plant. The World Nuclear Association
provides a comparison of deaths from accidents in course of different
forms of energy production. In their comparison, deaths per TW-yr
of electricity produced from 1970 to 1992 are quoted as 885 for
hydropower, 342 for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear.
Nuclear power plant accidents rank first in terms of their economic
cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage attributed to energy accidents as of 2008.
In 2020 a Parliamentary inquiry in Australia found nuclear power
to be one of the safest and cleanest among 140 specific technologies
analyzed based on data provided by MIT.
Severe accidents with core melt did
happen in nuclear power plants and the public is well aware of the
consequences of the three major accidents, namely Three Mile
Island (1979, USA), Chernobyl (1986, Soviet Union) and Fukushima
(2011, Japan). The NPPs involved in these accidents were of various
types (PWR, RBMK and BWR) and the circumstances leading to these events
were also very different. Severe accidents are events with extremely low
probability but with potentially serious consequences and they cannot
be ruled out with 100% certainty. After the Chernobyl accident,
international and national efforts focused on developing Gen III
nuclear power plants designed according to enhanced requirements related
to severe accident prevention and mitigation. The deployment of various
Gen III plant designs started in the last 15 years worldwide and now
practically only Gen III reactors are constructed and
commissioned. These latest technology 10-10 fatalities/GWh, see
Figure 3.5-1 of Part A). The fatality rates characterizing state-of-the art Gen III NPPs are the lowest of all the electricity generation technologies.
Chernobyl steam explosion
Map showing caesium-137 contamination in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine as of 1996.
The Chernobyl steam explosion was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. A steam explosion and graphite fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination
into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe.
It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and
is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster).
The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe
ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated
18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy. The accident raised concerns about the safety of the nuclear power industry, slowing its expansion for a number of years.
Despite the fact the Chernobyl disaster became a nuclear power
safety debate icon, there were other nuclear accidents in USSR at the Mayak nuclear weapons production plant (nearby Chelyabinsk,
Russia) and total radioactive emissions in Chelyabinsk accidents of
1949, 1957 and 1967 together were significantly higher than in
Chernobyl. However, the region near Chelyabinsk was and is much more sparsely populated than the region around Chernobyl.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has conducted 20 years of detailed scientific and epidemiological
research on the effects of the Chernobyl accident. Apart from the 57
direct deaths in the accident itself, UNSCEAR predicted in 2005 that up
to 4,000 additional cancer
deaths related to the accident would appear "among the 600 000 persons
receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986–87,
evacuees, and residents of the most contaminated areas)". According to BBC, "It is conclusive that around 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer —
most of which were treated and cured — were caused by the
contamination. Many suspect that the radiation has caused or will cause
other cancers, but the evidence is patchy. Amid reports of other health
problems — including birth defects — it still is not clear if any can be attributed to radiation". Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl disaster.
Fukushima disaster
The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the worst nuclear incident in 25 years, displaced 50,000 households after radioactive material leaked into the air, soil and sea. Whereas the radiation level never was an immediate life hazard outside the plant, the displacementwas the direct cause of over 1500 deaths. Radiation checks led to bans on some shipments of vegetables and fish.
Following an earthquake, tsunami, and failure of cooling systems at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and issues concerning other nuclear facilities
in Japan on 11 March 2011, a nuclear emergency was declared. This was
the first time a nuclear emergency had been declared in Japan, and
140,000 residents within 20 km (12 mi) of the plant were evacuated. Explosions and a fire resulted in increased levels of radiation, sparking a stock market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets.
The UK, France and some other countries advised their nationals to
consider leaving Tokyo, in response to fears of spreading nuclear
contamination. The accidents drew attention to ongoing concerns over Japanese nuclear seismic design standards and caused other governments to re-evaluate their nuclear programs.
John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's
National Nuclear Corporation, said that it "might be 100 years before
melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear
plant".
The health effects of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident are
widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low level. However, there
was an evacuation of 140,000 pregnant women and pre-school age children
from the area. The accident crystallized anti-nuclear
safety concerns among activists and the general public, resulted in new
regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a
contributor to the decline of new reactor construction that was already
underway in the 1970s.
New reactor designs
The nuclear power industry has moved to improve engineering design. Generation IV
reactors are now in late stage design and development to improve
safety, sustainability, efficiency, and cost. Key to the latest designs
is the concept of passive nuclear safety. Passive nuclear safety
does not require operator actions or electronic feedback in order to
shut down safely in the event of a particular type of emergency (usually
overheating resulting from a loss of coolant or loss of coolant flow).
This is in contrast to older-yet-common reactor designs, where the
natural tendency for the reaction was to accelerate rapidly from
increased temperatures. In such a case, cooling systems must be
operative to prevent meltdown. Past design mistakes like Fukushima
in Japan did not anticipate that a tsunami generated by an earthquake
would disable the backup systems that were supposed to stabilize the
reactor after the earthquake. New reactors with passive nuclear safety eliminate this failure mode.
Nuclear whistleblowers. On 2 February 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh (known as the GE Three) "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants, and their action has been called "an exemplary instance of whistleblowing".
The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their
disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant effect.
They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from
responsible positions in General Electric's
nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as
consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal
agencies, and overseas governments. The consulting firm they formed,
MHB Technical Associates, was technical advisor for the movie, The China Syndrome. The three engineers participated in Congressional hearings which their disclosures precipitated.
Nuclear whistleblower Arnold Gundersen discovered radioactive material in an accounting safe at Nuclear Energy Services (NES) in Danbury, Connecticut, the consulting firm where he held a $120,000-a-year job as senior vice president.
Three weeks after he notified the company president of what he believed
to be radiation safety violations, Gundersen was fired. According to The New York Times,
for three years, Gundersen "was awakened by harassing phone calls in
the middle of the night" and he "became concerned about his family's
safety". Gundersen believes he was blacklisted, harassed and fired for
doing what he thought was right. NES filed a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit against him that was settled out-of-court. A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
report concluded that there had been irregularities at NES, and the
Office of the Inspector General reported that the NRC had violated its
own regulations by sending business to NES.
Nuclear whistleblower George Galatis was a senior nuclear engineer who reported safety problems at the Millstone 1 Nuclear Power Plant, relating to reactor refueling procedures, in 1996. The unsafe procedures meant that spent fuel rod pools at Unit 1 had the potential to boil, possibly releasing radioactive steam. Galatis eventually took his concerns to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
to find that they had "known about the unsafe procedures for years". As
a result of going to the NRC, Galatis experienced "subtle forms of
harassment, retaliation, and intimidation".
The NRC Office of Inspector General investigated this episode and
essentially agreed with Galatis in Case Number 95-771, the report of
which tells the whole story. George Galatis was the subject of a Time magazine cover story on 4 March 1996. Millstone 1 was permanently closed in July 1998.
Nuclear whistleblower Gerald W. Brown was a former firestop contractor and consultant who uncovered the Thermo-lag circuit integrity scandal and silicone
foam scandals in U.S. and Canadian nuclear power plants, which led to
Congressional proceedings as well as Provincial proceedings in the Canadian Province of Ontario concerning deficiencies in passive fire protection.
Richard Levernier is an American nuclear whistleblower.
Levernier worked for 23 years as a nuclear security professional, and
identified security problems at U.S. nuclear facilities as part of his
job. Specifically, after 9/11, he identified problems with contingency
planning to protect US nuclear plants from terrorist attacks.
He said that the assumption that attackers would both enter and exit
from facilities was not valid, since suicide terrorists would not need
to exit. In response to this complaint, the U.S. Department of Energy withdrew Levernier's security clearance and he was assigned to clerical work. Levernier approached the United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which handles US federal whistleblower
matters. It took the OSC four years to vindicate Levernier, ruling that
the Department's retaliation was illegal – but the OSC could not
reinstate Levernier's security clearance, so he was unable to regain
work in nuclear security.
Health effects on population near nuclear power plants and workers
Fishermen near the now-dismantled Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Oregon. The reactor dome is visible on the left, and the cooling tower on the right.
A major concern in the nuclear debate is what the long-term effects
of living near or working in a nuclear power station are. These concerns
typically center around the potential for increased risks of cancer.
However, studies conducted by non-profit, neutral agencies have found no
compelling evidence of correlation between nuclear power and risk of
cancer.
There has been considerable research done on the effect of low-level radiation on humans. Debate on the applicability of Linear no-threshold model versus Radiation hormesis
and other competing models continues, however, the predicted low rate
of cancer with low dose means that large sample sizes are required in
order to make meaningful conclusions. A study conducted by the National Academy of Science found that carcinogenic effects of radiation does increase with dose.
The largest study on nuclear industry workers in history involved
nearly a half-million individuals and concluded that a 1–2% of cancer
deaths were likely due to occupational dose. This was on the high range
of what theory predicted by LNT, but was "statistically compatible".
Scientists learned about exposure to high level radiation from
studies of the effects of bombing populations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, it is difficult to trace the relationship of low level
radiation exposure to resulting cancers and mutations. This is because
the latency period between exposure and effect can be 25 years or more
for cancer and a generation or more for genetic damage. Since nuclear
generating plants have a brief history, it is early to judge the
effects.
Most human exposure to radiation comes from natural background radiation. Natural sources of radiation amount to an average annual radiation dose of 295 millirems (0.00295 sieverts).
The average person receives about 53 mrem (0.00053 Sv) from medical
procedures and 10 mrem from consumer products per year, as of May 2011. According to the National Safety Council,
people living within 50 miles (80 km) of a nuclear power plant receive
an additional 0.01 mrem per year. Living within 50 miles of a coal
plant adds 0.03 mrem per year.
In its 2000 report, "Sources and effects of ionizing radiation", the UNSCEAR also gives some values for areas where the radiation background is very high. You can for example have some value like 370 nanograys per hour (0.32 rad/a) on average in Yangjiang, China (meaning 3.24 mSv per year or 324 mrem), or 1,800 nGy/h (1.6 rad/a) in Kerala, India
(meaning 15.8 mSv per year or 1580 mrem). They are also some other "hot
spots", with some maximum values of 17,000 nGy/h (15 rad/a) in the hot
springs of Ramsar, Iran (that would be equivalent to 149 mSv per year pr 14,900 mrem per year). The highest background seem to be in Guarapari
with a reported 175 mSv per year (or 17,500 mrem per year), and
90,000 nGy/h (79 rad/a) maximum value given in the UNSCEAR report (on
the beaches). A study made on the Kerala
radiation background, using a cohort of 385,103 residents, concludes
that "showed no excess cancer risk from exposure to terrestrial gamma
radiation" and that "Although the statistical power of the study might
not be adequate due to the low dose, our cancer incidence study [...]
suggests it is unlikely that estimates of risk at low doses are
substantially greater than currently believed."
Current guidelines established by the NRC, require extensive emergency planning, between nuclear power plants, Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), and the local governments. Plans call for different zones,
defined by distance from the plant and prevailing weather conditions and
protective actions. In the reference cited, the plans detail different
categories of emergencies and the protective actions including possible
evacuation.
A German study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear
power plants called "the KiKK study" was published in December 2007.
According to Ian Fairlie, it "resulted in a public outcry and media
debate in Germany which has received little attention elsewhere". It has
been established "partly as a result of an earlier study by Körblein
and Hoffmann which had found statistically significant increases in solid cancers (54%), and in leukemia
(76%) in children aged less than 5 within 5 km (3.1 mi) of 15 German
nuclear power plant sites. It red a 2.2-fold increase in leukemias and a
1.6-fold increase in solid (mainly embryonal) cancers among children
living within 5 km of all German nuclear power stations." In 2011 a new study of the KiKK data was incorporated into an assessment by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment
(COMARE) of the incidence of childhood leukemia around British nuclear
power plants. It found that the control sample of population used for
comparison in the German study may have been incorrectly selected and
other possible contributory factors, such as socio-economic ranking,
were not taken into consideration. The committee concluded that there is
no significant evidence of an association between risk of childhood
leukemia (in under 5-year olds) and living in proximity to a nuclear
power plant.
The average annual exposure to a
member of the public, due to effects attributable to nuclear
energy-based electricity production is about 0.2 microsievert, which is
ten thousand times less than the average annual dose due to the natural
background radiation. According to the LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Analysis)
studies analysed in Chapter 3.4 of Part A, the total impact on human
health of both the radiological and non-radiological emissions from the
nuclear energy chain are comparable with the human health impact from
offshore wind energy.
Safety culture in host nations
Some developing countries which plan to go nuclear have very poor industrial safety records and problems with political corruption. Inside China, and outside the country, the speed of the nuclear construction program has raised safety concerns. Prof. He Zuoxiu,
who was involved with China's atomic bomb program, has said that plans
to expand production of nuclear energy twentyfold by 2030 could be
disastrous, as China was seriously underprepared on the safety front.
China's fast-expanding nuclear sector is opting for cheap
technology that "will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its
reactors reach the end of their lifespans", according to diplomatic
cables from the US embassy in Beijing.
The rush to build new nuclear power plants may "create problems for
effective management, operation and regulatory oversight" with the
biggest potential bottleneck being human resources – "coming up with
enough trained personnel to build and operate all of these new plants,
as well as regulate the industry".
The challenge for the government and nuclear companies is to "keep an
eye on a growing army of contractors and subcontractors who may be
tempted to cut corners".
China is advised to maintain nuclear safeguards in a business culture
where quality and safety are sometimes sacrificed in favor of
cost-cutting, profits, and corruption. China has asked for international
assistance in training more nuclear power plant inspectors.
Nuclear proliferation and terrorism concerns
Opposition to nuclear power is frequently linked to opposition to nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear scientist Mark Z. Jacobson, believes the growth of nuclear power has "historically increased the ability of nations to obtain or enrich uranium for nuclear weapons".
However, many countries have civilian nuclear power programs, while not
developing nuclear weapons, and all civilian reactors are covered by IAEA non-proliferation safeguards, including international inspections at the plants.
Iran has developed a nuclear power program
under IAEA treaty controls, and attempted to develop a parallel nuclear
weapons program in strict separation of the latter to avoid IAEA
inspections. Modern light water reactors used in most civilian nuclear power plants cannot be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.
A 1993-2013 Megatons to Megawatts Program
successfully led to recycling 500 tonnes of Russian warhead-grade
high-enriched uranium (equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) to
low-enriched uranium used as fuel for civilian power plants and was the
most successful non-proliferation program in history.
Development of covert and hostile nuclear installations was
occasionally prevented by military operations in what is described as
"radical counter-proliferation" activities.
Operation Outside the Box (2007), by Israel, against a suspected Al Kibar nuclear construction site in Syria.
No military operations were targeted against live nuclear reactors
and no operations resulted in nuclear incidents. No terrorist attacks
targeted live reactors, with the only recorded quasi-terrorist attacks
on a nuclear power plant construction sites by anti-nuclear activists:
1977-1982 ETA performed numerous attacks, including bombings and kidnappings, against Lemóniz Nuclear Power Plant constructions site and its personnel
18 January 1982 when environmental activist Chaïm Nissim fired RPG rockets at Superphénix reactor construction site in France, causing no damage
According to a 2004 report by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office,
"The human, environmental, and economic costs from a successful attack
on a nuclear power plant that results in the release of substantial
quantities of radioactive material to the environment could be great." The United States 9/11 Commission has said that nuclear power plants were potential targets originally considered for the 9/11 September 2001 attacks. If terrorist groups could sufficiently damage safety systems to cause a core meltdown
at a nuclear power plant, and/or sufficiently damage spent fuel pools,
such an attack could lead to a widespread radioactive contamination.
New reactor designs have features of passive safety,
such as the flooding of the reactor core without active intervention by
reactor operators. But these safety measures have generally been
developed and studied with respect to accidents, not to the deliberate
reactor attack by a terrorist group. However, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission now also requires new reactor license applications to consider security during the design stage.
Use of waste byproduct as a weapon
There
is a concern if the by-products of nuclear fission (the nuclear waste
generated by the plant) were to be left unprotected it could be stolen
and used as a radiological weapon, colloquially known as a "dirty bomb".
No actual terrorist attacks involving "dirty bomb" were ever recorded,
although cases of illegal trade of fissile material happened.
There are additional concerns that the transportation of nuclear
waste along roadways or railways opens it up for potential theft. The
United Nations has since called upon world leaders to improve security
in order to prevent radioactive material falling into the hands of terrorists,
and such fears have been used as justifications for centralized,
permanent, and secure waste repositories and increased security along
transportation routes.
The spent fissile fuel is not radioactive enough to create any
sort of effective nuclear weapon, in a traditional sense where the
radioactive material is the means of explosion. Nuclear reprocessing plants also acquire uranium from spent reactor fuel and take the remaining waste into their custody.
Public opinion
Support for nuclear power varies between countries and has changed significantly over time.
Share
of the public who oppose the nuclear energy as a means of electricity
production in 2011, following the Fukushima disaster.
Global public support for energy sources, based on a survey by Ipsos (2011).
Trends and future prospects
As of 12 October 2017, a total of 448 nuclear reactors were operating
in 30 countries, four more than the historical maximum of 444 in 2002.
Since 2002, utilities have started up 26 units and disconnected 32
including six units at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in
Japan. The current world reactor fleet has a total nominal capacity of
about 392 gigawatts. Despite six fewer units operating in 2011 than in 2002, the capacity is about 9 gigawatts higher. The numbers of new operative reactors, final shutdowns, and new initiated constructions according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in recent years are as follows:
Year
New connections
Shutdowns
Net change
Construction initiation
# of reactors
GW
# of reactors
GW
# of reactors
GW
# of reactors
GW
2004
5
4.8
5
1.4
0
+3.4
2
1.3
2005
4
3.8
2
0.9
+2
+2.9
3
2.9
2006
2
1.5
8
2.2
−6
−0.7
4
3.3
2007
3
1.9
0
––
+3
+1.9
8
6.5
2008
0
––
1
0.4
−1
−0.4
10
10.5
2009
2
1.0
3
2.5
−1
−1.4
12
13.1
2010
5
3.8
1
0.1
+4
+3.6
16
15.8
2011
7
4.0
13
11.4
−6
−7.4
2
0.9
Stephanie Cooke
has argued that the cost of building new reactors is extremely high, as
are the risks involved. Most utilities have said that they won't build
new plants without government loan guarantees.
There are also bottlenecks at factories that produce reactor pressure
vessels and other equipment, and there is a shortage of qualified
personnel to build and operate the reactors,
although the recent acceleration in nuclear power plant construction is
drawing a substantial expansion of the heavy engineering capability.
Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the International Energy Agency halved its estimate of additional nuclear generating capacity to be built by 2035. Platts
has reported that "the crisis at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plants has
prompted leading energy-consuming countries to review the safety of
their existing reactors and cast doubt on the speed and scale of planned
expansions around the world". In 2011, The Economist
reported that nuclear power "looks dangerous, unpopular, expensive and
risky", and that "it is replaceable with relative ease and could be
forgone with no huge structural shifts in the way the world works".
In September 2011, German engineering giant Siemens announced it will withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry, as a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The company is to boost its work in the renewable energy sector. Commenting on the German government's policy to close nuclear plants, Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich,
stated: "It is wrong to shut down the atomic power plants, because this
is a cheap source of energy, and wind and solar power are by no means
able to provide a replacement. They are much more expensive, and the
energy that comes out is of inferior quality. Energy-intensive
industries will move out, and the competitiveness of the German manufacturing sector will be reduced or wages will be depressed."
In 2011, Mycle Schneider spoke of a global downward trend in the nuclear power industry:
The international nuclear lobby has pursued a 10-year-long, massive
propaganda strategy aimed at convincing decision-makers that atomic
technology has a bright future as a low-carbon energy option... however,
most of the high-flying nuclear plans never materialized. The historic
maximum of reactors operating worldwide was achieved in 2002 with 444
units. In the European Union the historic peak was reached as early as
1988 with 177 reactors, of which only 134 are left. The only new
projects underway in Europe are heavily over budget and much delayed.
As Time magazine rightly stated in March, "Nuclear power is
expanding only in places where taxpayers and ratepayers can be compelled
to foot the bill." China is building 27 – or more than 40 percent – of
the 65 units officially under construction around the world. Even there,
though, nuclear is fading as an energy option. While China has invested
the equivalent of about $10 billion per year into nuclear power in
recent years, in 2010 it spent twice as much on wind energy alone and some $54.5 billion on all renewables combined.
In contrast, proponents of nuclear power argue that nuclear power has killed by far the fewest people per terawatt hour
of any type of power generation, and it has a very small effect on the
environment with effectively zero emissions of any kind. This is argued
even taking into account the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, in which
few people were killed directly and few excess cancers will be caused
by releases of radioactivity to the environment.
Some proponents acknowledge that most people will not accept this
sort of statistical argument nor will they believe reassuring
statements from industry or government. Indeed, the industry itself has
created fear of nuclear power by pointing out that radioactivity can be
dangerous. Improved communication by industry might help to overcome
current fears regarding nuclear power, but it will be a difficult task
to change current perceptions in the general population.
But with regard to the proposition that "Improved communication
by industry might help to overcome current fears regarding nuclear
power", Princeton University Physicist M. V. Ramana
says that the basic problem is that there is "distrust of the social
institutions that manage nuclear energy", and a 2001 survey by the
European Commission found that "only 10.1 percent of Europeans trusted
the nuclear industry". This public distrust is periodically reinforced
by safety violations by nuclear companies,
or through ineffectiveness or corruption on the part of nuclear
regulatory authorities. Once lost, says Ramana, trust is extremely
difficult to regain.
Faced with public antipathy, the nuclear industry has "tried a variety
of strategies to persuade the public to accept nuclear power", including
the publication of numerous "fact sheets" that discuss issues of public
concern. Ramana says that none of these strategies have been very
successful.
In March 2012, E.ON UK and RWE npower
announced they would be pulling out of developing new nuclear power
plants in the UK, placing the future of nuclear power in the UK in
doubt. More recently, Centrica (who own British Gas) pulled out of the race on 4 February 2013 by letting go its 20% option on four new nuclear plants.
Cumbria county council (a local authority) turned down an application
for a final waste repository on 30 January 2013 – there is currently no
alternative site on offer.
In terms of current nuclear status and future prospects:
Ten new reactors were connected to the grid, In 2015, the
highest number since 1990, but expanding Asian nuclear programs are
balanced by retirements of aging plants and nuclear reactor phase-outs. Seven reactors were permanently shut down.
441 operational reactors had a worldwide net capacity of 382,855
megawatts of electricity in 2015. However, some reactors are classified
as operational, but are not producing any power.
67 new nuclear reactors were under construction in 2015, including four EPR units. The first two EPR projects, in Finland and France, were meant to lead a nuclear renaissance but both are facing costly construction delays. Construction commenced on two Chinese EPR units in 2009 and 2010. The Chinese units were to start operation in 2014 and 2015, but the Chinese government halted construction because of safety concerns. China's National Nuclear Safety Administration
carried out on-site inspections and issued a permit to proceed with
function tests in 2016. Taishan 1 is expected to start up in the first
half of 2017 and Taishan 2 is scheduled to begin operating by the end of
2017.
Brazil, China, India, Japan and the Netherlands generate more
electricity from wind energy than from nuclear sources. New power
generation using solar power grew by 33% in 2015, wind power over 17%, and 1.3% for nuclear power, exclusively due to development in China.
In February 2020, the world's first open-source platform for the
design, construction, and financing of nuclear power plants, OPEN100,
was launched in the United States.
This project aims to provide a clear pathway to a sustainable, low
cost, zero-carbon future. Collaborators in the OPEN100 project include
Framatome, Studsvik, the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory, Siemens,
Pillsbury, the Electric Power Research Institute, the US Department of
Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy
announced selecting two U.S.-based teams to receive $160 million in
initial funding under the new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program
(ARDP).
TerraPower LLC (Bellevue, WA) and X-energy (Rockville, MD) were each
awarded $80 million to build two advanced nuclear reactors that can be
operational within seven years.
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