The Generation IV Technology Roadmap identifies goals for the Generation IV nuclear energy systems. The goals have three purposes: First, they serve as the basis for developing criteria to assess and compare the systems in the technology road map. Second, they are challenging and stimulate the search for innovative nuclear energy systems both fuel cycles and reactor technologies. Third, they will serve to motivate and guide the R&D on Generation IV systems as collaborative efforts get underway.
The goals for Generation IV are defined in the four broad areas of sustainability, economics, safety and reliability, and proliferation resistance and physical protection. Sustainability goals focus on fuel utilization and waste management. Economics goals focus on competitive life cycle and energy production costs and financial risk. Safety and reliability goals focus on safe and reliable operation, improved accident management and minimization of consequences, investment protection, and essentially eliminating the technical need for off-site emergency response. The proliferation resistance and physical protection goal focuses on controlling and securing nuclear material and nuclear facilities. Each broad goal area is briefly discussed below.
Safety and reliability are essential priorities in the development and operation of nuclear energy systems. Nuclear energy systems must be designed so that during normal operation or anticipated transients, safety margins are adequate, accidents are prevented, and off-normal situations do not deteriorate into severe accidents. At the same time, competitiveness requires a very high level of reliability and performance. There has been a definite trend over the years to improve the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants, reduce the frequency and degree of off-site radioactive releases, and reduce the possibility of significant plant damage. Looking ahead, Generation IV systems will face new challenges to their reliability at higher temperatures and other anticipated conditions. Generation IV systems have goals to achieve high levels of safety and reliability through further improvements. The three safety and reliability goals continue the past trend and seek simplified designs that are safe and further reduce the potential for severe accidents and minimize their consequences. The achievement of these ambitious goals cannot rely only upon technical improvements, but will also require systematic consideration of human performance as a major contributor to the plant availability, reliability, inspectability and maintainability.
Proliferation resistance and physical protection are also essential priorities in the expanding role of nuclear energy systems. The safeguards provided by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have been highly successful in preventing the use of civilian nuclear energy systems for nuclear weapons proliferation. This goal applies to all inventories of nuclear materials (both source materials and special fissionable materials) in the system involved in enrichment, conversion, fabrication, power production, recycling, and waste disposal. In addition, existing nuclear plants are highly secure and designed to withstand external events such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, plane crashes and fires. Their many protective features considerably reduce the impact of external or internal threats through the redundancy, diversity and independence of the safety systems. This goal points out the need to increase public confidence in the security of nuclear energy facilities against terrorist attacks. Advanced systems need to be designed from the start with improved physical protection against acts of terrorism, to a level commensurate with the protection of other critical systems and infrastructure.
Sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of present generations while enhancing and not jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet society’s needs indefinitely into the future. There is a growing desire in society for the production of energy in accordance with sustainability principles. Sustainability requires the conservation of resources, protection of the environment, preservation of the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, and the avoidance of placing unjustified burdens upon them. Existing and future nuclear power plants meet current and increasingly stringent clean air objectives, since their energy is produced without combustion processes. The two sustainability goals encompass the interrelated needs of improved waste management, minimal environmental impacts, effective fuel utilization, and development of new energy products that can expand nuclear energy’s benefits beyond electrical generation.
Economic competitiveness is a requirement of the marketplace and is essential for Generation IV nuclear energy systems. In today’s environment, nuclear power plants are primarily baseload units that were purchased and operated by regulated public and private utilities. A transition is taking place worldwide from regulated to deregulated energy markets, which will increase the number of independent power producers and merchant power plant owner/operators. Future nuclear energy systems should accommodate a range of plant ownership options and anticipate a wider array of potential roles and options for deploying nuclear power plants, including load following and smaller units. While it is anticipated that Generation IV nuclear energy systems will primarily produce electricity, they will also help meet anticipated future needs for a broader range of energy products beyond electricity. For example, hydrogen, process heat, district heating and potable water will likely be needed to keep up with increasing worldwide demands and long-term changes in energy use. Generation IV systems have goals to ensure that they are economically attractive while meeting changing energy needs.
