POWER January 2020 - 28

NUCLEAR
Innovation Propels Nuclear
Power on New Trajectory
Innovation is ushering in a new age for nuclear power. As well as boosting plant
economics, efficiency, and flexibility, advanced technologies could open up new
markets to meet soaring demand for heat and hydrogen-and even medical isotopes.
Sonal
Patel
n its annual forecast released last September,
the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) presented a somber
outlook for nuclear power. If current
market, technology, and resource trends
continue, and if few changes are made in
explicit laws, policies, and regulations that
govern nuclear power today, the world's
nuclear capacity will gradually decline
from the 399 GWe installed at 449 operational
nuclear reactors as of December
2019 until 2040, though it expects a slight
rebound to reach 371 GWe-or about
3% of the global capacity share-by the
middle of the century.
While nuclear power's share of global
generation stood stable at nearly 11% this
year, a critical concern voiced consistently
by the heads of major nuclear organizations
about the dismal capacity number
is that it has already fallen by nearly 10%
since 2006. As Nuclear Energy Agency
(NEA) Director-General William D. Magwood
IV noted, the decline can be attributed
to the post-Fukushima temporary
shutdown of a number of plants in Japan,
but also to safety-related permanent closures
in Japan, market competitiveness
concerns in the U.S., and political phaseout
decisions in Europe. " [W]hile a number
of reactors are under construction
mainly in China and Russia, most of the
new build projects in the United States
and Western Europe have suffered schedule
delays and budget overruns, making
investors reluctant to further engage, " he
said. The industry needs a reset, Magwood
said, and the urgency to keep the
sector relevant has been amplified lately
by calls from global entities to include nuclear
in the decarbonization movement.
But industry-which largely comprises
I
state-led efforts-has already moved into
high gear, first to identify and tackle headwinds
that stymy progress on innovation,
and then, as crucially, to foster collaboration
to propel it. The NEA, a specialized
agency within the Organisation for Eco28
nomic
Co-operation and Development
(OECD) that services both the Generation
IV International Forum (GIF) and the International
Framework for Nuclear Energy
Cooperation, has recently issued detailed
roadmaps for key areas of innovation under
its 2015-launched Nuclear Innovation
2050 initiative. These include: passive
safety systems and improved accident
management; aging management; advanced
fuels and materials; advanced fuel
cycles; decommissioning techniques; and
heat and cogeneration. Meanwhile, at the
first Global Forum on Innovation for the
Future of Nuclear Energy in South Korea
last June-which the NEA organized with
the IAEA, the Electric Power Research Institute,
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, and
the UK National Nuclear Laboratory-participants
outlined emerging opportunities
that could transform the production and
marketability of nuclear power, including
the promise of big data, hybridization, and
the dire need for a skilled workforce and
knowledge management (Figure 1).
The Next Decade Will Be Pivotal for
Advanced Nuclear
In the U.S., where nuclear retirements
have ticked up of late owing in part to
markets that are flooded with cheap natural
gas, innovation is supported strongly
by bipartisan-backed policy. And at the
center of that effort is the Department of
Energy's (DOE's) Idaho National Laboratory
(INL), an entity that evolved from the
1949-established National Reactor Testing
Station, which, among many remarkable
nuclear achievements, built the world's
first nuclear power plant and powered
the first U.S. city with nuclear energy.
Revitalizing the entity's orginal vision and
function as a nuclear innovator, in August
2019, the laboratory established the Nuclear
Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC),
a program to provide facilities and capabilities
to develop, test, and demonstrate
promising advanced reactor concepts to
boost commercialization and deployment,
www.powermag.com
1. A whiteboard cartoon outlines key discussions
that took place at the first Global Forum
on Innovation for the Future of Nuclear Energy,
which was held in Gyeongju, South Korea,
in June 2019. Courtesy: Nuclear Energy
Agency
domestically and beyond. And as INL Director
Mark Peters told POWER, NRIC
already has an impressive pipeline of
technologies that could reshape the sector's
trajectory in the near term.
First, NRIC wants to demonstrate a
microreactor-Westinghouse's
2-MW
e-Vinci-by 2022, anticipating that the
first commercial microreactors will be deployed
to provide remote site power and
process heat by 2025. It is also backing
efforts by Portland, Oregon-based NuScale
Power to build its first 60-MW light
water reactor module at the INL site by
2026. Construction of that project, spearheaded
by Utah Associated Municipal
Power Systems-an energy services
interlocal agency of the State of Utah-
could begin as early as 2023. Also, by
2026, it wants to begin operation of the
Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), a fast reactor
that could foster experiments with much
higher neutron energy and flux compared
to the nation's existing 35 research reactors.
The DOE says that while the VTR is
necessary to keep the nation technologically
competitive with China and Russia,
it will likely be a sodium-cooled pool type
reactor that will use fuels with metallic
alloys, including high-assay low-enriched
uranium fuel, and cost between $3 billion
and $6 billion to build. Finally, closer to
2030, NRIC could demonstrate new nonlight-water-reactor
technology.
POWER | January 2020
http://www.powermag.com
POWER January 2020

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