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The Power and Transportation Future
Published in Michael Frank Hordeski, Hydrogen & Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power, 2020
The burning of coal and other fossil fuels is driving the concerns over climate change, but nuclear energy provides an alternative. The risks of atomic piles are manageable beside that of fossil fuels. Unlike global warming, radiation containment, waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation are more manageable. The latest generation III+ reactors seems to be fuel-efficient, use passive safety technologies, and could be cost-competitive.
Weaknesses of the nuclear option
Published in Chris Anastasi, Who Needs Nuclear Power, 2020
Generation III+ reactors were designed with enhanced, passive safety features; they do not require operator interventions but rely on gravity or natural convection to maintain integrity. These reactors also exhibit higher fuel burn-up in-situ, reducing overall fuel consumption and waste production. It is these reactors that tend to be built today.
Nuclear Power Technologies through Year 2035
Published in D. Yogi Goswami, Frank Kreith, Energy Conversion, 2017
Kenneth D. Kok, Edwin A. Harvego
The biggest change in the Generation III reactors is the addition of passive safety systems. Earlier reactors relied heavily on operator actions to deal with a variety of operational upset conditions or abnormal events. The advanced reactors incorporate passive or inherent safety systems that do not require operator intervention in the case of a malfunction. These systems rely on such things as gravity, natural convection, and resistance to high temperatures.
Neutronic investigation of a VVER-1200 (Th-233U)O2 fuel assembly with protactinium oxide as a burnable absorber coated on the outer surface of the fuel rods
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2022
Fadi El Banni, Ouadie Kabach, Aka Boko, Bogbe L.H. Gogon, Aka A. Koua, Georges A. Monnehan, Abdelfettah Benchrif, Hamid Amsil, Abdelouahed Chetaine
Thorium fuel cycles have been extensively examined as potential replacements for proven technologies such as light water reactors (Raj and Kannan 2022), molten salt reactors (Cui et al. 2018), advanced high-temperature reactors (Attom et al. 2019), as well as in the proposed Generation III+ EPR reactors (du Toit and Naicker 2018). Generation III+ reactors, such as the VVER-1200 (ROSATOM 2015), have many advantages, including the ability to achieve high fuel burnup, which results in more efficient fuel use and less waste. Furthermore, they can accommodate a wide range of nuclear fuels. Thorium incorporation studies in the VVER-1200 reactor have also been published; but in most cases, thorium was combined with 235U (Dwiddar et al. 2015) or Plutonium (Abdelghafar Galahom 2020) using the homogenous or well-known seed blanket assembly.
NEA Framing Nuclear Megaproject “Pathologies”: Vices of the Modern Western Society?
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
The problems faced by NPP projects in the West in general and those with the EPR in particular provided the basis for the inquiry of the NEA framings presented in this paper. The development of the EPR began at the end of the 1980s as a French-German joint endeavor promising to relaunch nuclear new-build after the long period without reactor orders following the Chernobyl catastrophe. The EPR was also meant to become a major export product of the French nuclear industry—the showcase of the “nuclear renaissance” in Europe.49 As an incremental improvement to the present reactors, this so-called Generation III reactor would be significantly safer, consume less uranium, produce less radioactive waste, and generate electricity at a cost up to 20% lower than the current Generation II reactors.49,50
Safe, clean, proliferation resistant and cost-effective Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactors for sustainable development
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2022
Generation IV refers to the fact that reactor designs are frequently classified into generations. The first commercial nuclear reactors built in the late 1950s and 1960s are classified as Generation I systems. Generation II systems include commercial reactors that were built from 1970 to 1990. Generation III reactors are commercial designs that incorporate evolutionary improvements over Generation II systems. Generation IV is the classification used to describe a set of advanced reactor designs that use non-water coolants and are under development today (MIT 2018).