Long-Term Nuclear Industry Outlook - 2004
The nuclear industry has become increasingly efficient and global in nature, but may now be poised at a crossroads between graceful decline and profound growth as a viable provider of electrical energy. Predicted population and energy-demand growth, an increased interest in global climate change, the desire to reduce the international dependence on oil as an energy source, the potential for hydrogen co-generation using nuclear power reactors, and the improved performance in the nuclear power industry have raised the prospect of a “nuclear renaissance” in which nuclear power would play an increasingly more important role in both domestic and international energy market. This report provides an assessment of the role nuclear-generated power will plan in the global energy future and explores the impact of that role on export controls.
Nuclear Energy And The Implications Of The UN World Summit On Sustainable Development
The 2002 United Nations World Summit On Sustainable Development (WSSD) at Johannesburg, South Africa wrought in significant turn-around on attitudes toward energy as the delegates came to recognize that energy is at the heart of sustainable development. As history demonstrates, developing countries will not suppress their need to convert environmental resources into energy to generate economic growth. Nations require the capability to generate local and regional incomes, not “transfer wealth” if they are to develop. And the WSSD also brought acknowledgement that developing countries cannot be expected to invest in expensive efforts to curb their production of greenhouse gasses. When the need for energy gained WSSD recognition, the European Union intensified their demand for renewable energy targets. Such targets quickly became a stumbling block for energy negotiations as the developed countries recognized that most of the challenge would fall upon them. The U.S. target, for instance, would require that 12% of all U.S. energy be generated by renewables by the year 2012.
Numerical tools applied to power reactor noise analysis
In order to be able to calculate the space- and frequency-dependent neutron noise in real inhomogeneous systems in two-group theory, a code was developed for the calculation of the Green's function (dynamic transfer function) of such systems. This paper reports on the development as well as the test and application of the numerical tools employed. The code that was developed yields the space-dependence of the fluctuations of the neutron flux induced by fluctuating properties of the medium in the two-group diffusion approximation and in a two-dimensional representation of heterogeneous systems, for both critical systems and non-critical systems with an external source. Some applications of these tools to power reactor noise analysis are then described, including the unfolding of the parameters of the noise source from the induced neutron noise, measured at a few discrete locations throughout the core. Other concrete applications concern the study of the space-dependence of the Decay Ratio in Boiling Water Reactors, the noise-based estimation of the Moderator Temperature Coefficient of reactivity in Pressurized Water Reactors, the modeling of the beam- and shell-mode core-barrel vibrations in Pressurized Water Reactors, and the investigation of the validity of the point-kinetic approximation in subcritical systems driven by an external source. In most of these applications, calculations performed using the code are compared with at-power plant measurements. Power reactor noise analysis applications of the above type, i.e. core monitoring without disturbing plant operation, is of particular interest in the framework of the extensive program of power uprates worldwide.