ANS President Jim Lake at Latin America's Nuclear Energy Symposium
The Fourth Generation of Nuclear Power was the topic of ANS President Jim Lake's presentation to the attendees at the "Symposium on Latin America's Nuclear Energy at the New Millenium's Threshold". The Symposium was held June 26-29, 2000 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Fourth Generation of Nuclear Power
James A. Lake, PhD
President
American Nuclear Society
For presentation at the
Symposium on Latin America's Nuclear Energy
At the New Millenium's Threshold
June 26-29, 2000
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
James A. Lake, PhD
President
American Nuclear Society
For presentation at the
Symposium on Latin America's Nuclear Energy
At the New Millenium's Threshold
June 26-29, 2000
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Introduction, the Energy Imperative
Plentiful, affordable electrical energy is a critically important commodity to Nations wishing to grow their economy. There is a well known correlation between several standard of living indices (from Gross Domestic Product to life expectancy) and electricity use that suggests that energy, and more specifically electricity, is the fuel of economic growth. However, more than one third of the world's population (more than two billion people) live a subsistence lifestyle today without access to any electricity. Further, another two billion people in the world exist on less than 100 watts of electricity per capita. By comparison, the large economies of Japan and France use more than 800 watts of electricity per capita, and the United States uses nearly 1500 watts of electricity per capita.
As the Governments of developing Nations strive to improve their economies, and hence the standard of living of their people, electricity generation is increasing. Several forecasts of electrical generation growth have concluded that world electricity demand will roughly double in the next 20-25 years, and possibly triple by 2050. This electrical generation growth will occur primarily in the rapidly developing and growing economies in Asia and in Latin America. This net growth is in addition to the approaching need for replacement generating capacity in the U.S. and Europe as aging power plants, primarily fossil fueled, are replaced. This very substantial worldwide electricity demand growth places the issue of where this new electricity generation capacity is to come from squarely in front of the developed countries who have a fundamental desire (if not a moral obligation) to help these developing countries sustain their economic growth and improve their standard of living, while at the same time, protecting the energy (and economic) security of their own countries.
It is estimated that, in 2000, world electrical generation will be composed of the following:
Coal: 36.5%
Natural Gas: 16.7%
Oil: 9.5%
Hydroelectric: 21.3%
Nuclear: 16.0%
Natural Gas: 16.7%
Oil: 9.5%
Hydroelectric: 21.3%
Nuclear: 16.0%
Coal is a mainstay of electrical generation around the world, and where coal supplies are readily available as they have been in the United States, China and many other countries, coal is the fundamental building block for that country's initial electrical capacity. Coal is generally one of the lowest cost fuels, and is the low-cost electricity leader in the U.S. However, major increases in coal uses for electrical generation faces challenges associated with the growing cost of particle-emissions scrubbing, and more recently, gaseous effluent control. There is no doubt that coal will continue to play a major role in electricity generation in the developing as well as the developed world, but it cannot do the whole job if we are to balance our needs for electricity and economic growth with our environmental-protection responsibilities. Natural gas is growing in importance in many countries, like the U.S., for electricity generation for several reasons. First, natural gas is relatively cheap and plentiful, new generating capacity can be added quickly and relatively cheaply. Second, gas turbine generators are more efficient than conventional steam systems. Third, because of the higher thermal efficiency and the combustion of hydrogen as well as carbon in a natural-gas-fired system, greenhouse gas emissions are substantially lower per unit of electricity generated than for coal-fired systems. However, natural gas systems are still substantial greenhouse gas emitters, natural gas is not readily available in many parts of the world, and gas prices are already rising as the market share of gas-fired systems increases. Natural gas electrical generating systems will play a major short term role in filling new capacity needs in countries where gas is plentiful, like the U.S., but it may face environmental and economic limitations associated with emissions control, infrastructure (gas pipe line) costs, and gas prices. Oil is still used around the world to generate nearly 10% of electricity. This is in contrast to the U.S. where nuclear power has largely displaced oil, which now accounts for only about 2% of electricity generated. Oil is relatively expensive for electricity generation, and the price of oil can fluctuate wildly as the recent doubling of crude oil prices demonstrates. Oil also suffers from many of the same emissions restrictions that afflict coal. Hydroelectric power is cheap and widely believed to be environmentally friendly because it does not emit combustion products or greenhouse gasses. Many parts of the world can expand hydroelectric capacity, but other countries like the U.S. cannot. Furthermore, there is growing concern for the environmental and sociological impacts of large hydroelectric dams. For example, in the northwest United States, where I live, there is a heated debate related to tearing down major hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers because of their impact on native salmon populations who cannot return upstream in sufficient numbers each Spring to spawn. This brings us to nuclear power. There are currently something like 435 reactors generating about 16% of the world's electricity (as much as 75% in countries like France, and 20% in the U.S.). We, in this audience, know full well that nuclear power shows great promise as an economical, safe, and emissions-free source of electrical energy, but it also carries at least the perception of great problems, from public safety to dealing with radioactive wastes. I will have more to say about this later. For the moment, let me put forth the proposition that nuclear power should (and must) play a role in the future world energy supply, and perhaps should play a major role as the only near-term technology capable of large-scale, near-term deployment without greenhouse gas emissions. If there is a moral imperative to assure the world of abundant, affordable, and clean electricity supplies, then there is no less of a moral imperative for us to assure that nuclear power is capable of taking its rightful place in this energy mix.
The Nuclear Paradigm Has Changed
As we stand on the threshold of the new millenium of unprecedented energy and economic growth around the world, we need to ask ourselves what state nuclear power is in, what challenges exist that may inhibit growth of nuclear power in the future, and what we need to be doing now to address these challenges.
The United States, as one of the pioneers in the development and application of nuclear power, serves as a very important indicator of the status of nuclear power, and of its future challenges. 103 nuclear power plants generated 20% of U.S. electricity (nearly 730 billion kWhr) in 1999. Although much has been made of the fact that no new nuclear power plant orders have been placed in the U.S. since the early 1970s, the electricity generation from nuclear power has risen 8% per year for the past 20 years. Plants placed on order in the 1970s have been completed (40 since 1980, the last of which was Watts Bar I in 1996), and the plant capacity factor has risen steadily to a high of 88% in 1999. The total electrical output from U.S. nuclear plants has thus risen from something less than 300 billion kWhr in 1980 to 730 billion kWhr today. This increased electrical generation capacity is one of the keys to the excellent economic performance of U.S. nuclear power.
At the same time that nuclear plant economic performance has improved, so to has safety performance. Safety performance indicators published by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) have shown consistent and steady improvement. These indicators include unplanned automatic shutdowns (where two thirds of U.S. nuclear plants had zero in 1998), industrial safety (U.S. nuclear plants have an industrial accident rate less than one-tenth that of all U.S. industries), and collective radiation exposure to plant workers which are currently 80% lower than 1980 values.
In the U.S., and increasingly around the world, electricity markets are being deregulated in an effort to encourage competition and lower electricity prices for consumers. The early predictions of economic doom for nuclear-generated electricity in a competitive, deregulated U.S. market have been proven wrong. The legal process leading to deregulation in 24 states have resulted in negotiated agreements related to recovery of the remaining capital costs of nuclear plants. This financial closure of the capital cost recovery issue has stimulated the financial interest in nuclear power because the remaining nuclear operating costs (operations, maintenance, and fuel) are very competitive with other electricity supplies in the U.S. In 1999, the average non-capital cost of nuclear-generated electricity was about 2 cents/kWhr. This is the low-price market leader in the U.S., approximately the same as coal and substantially lower than natural gas (at about 3.5 cents/kWhr and rising as both natural gas prices and gas turbine capital costs increase).
In the U.S., nuclear power is first and foremost a profit-motivated business. The business side of nuclear power has been very good; in 1998, 7 of the top 10 investor-owned utilities, ranked by profit, were nuclear utilities. The improved economic environment for nuclear power in the U.S. has created a desire for acquisition of nuclear assets and a consolidation of ownership of nuclear power plants that began in 1998 with the purchase of the Three Mile Island #1 plant by a joint venture between Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO Energy) and British Energy, called AmerGen. This was followed by the announcement of the merger of PECO Energy and Unicom (Commonwealth Edison) creating a company with 20% of the U.S. nuclear generating capacity. Most recently, Entergy bid nearly $1B to purchase the Fitzpatrick and Indian Point 3 plants in the highly-valued New York Power Authority electricity market. Nuclear plant ownership consolidation is resulting in stronger, more efficient and more competent nuclear generating companies. This same consolidation is occurring in the nuclear plant vendor market (the BNFL/Westinghouse/ABB Combustion merger, for example), and the nuclear fuel market. This market-driven consolidation, and the strong business interest in U.S. nuclear assets, is a positive indicator of the economic health of the U.S. nuclear industry.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is revising the way in which it regulates operations of nuclear power plants. The future regulatory process will be more output, or performance-based and use risk-prioritized regulatory criteria. The new process has the potential to remove undue regulatory (and hence economic) burden without compromising safety. NRC granted the first 20-year license extension to the Baltimore Gas & Electric Calvert Cliffs plant on March 23, 2000, and the Duke Oconee plant followed in May. The efficient processing of these license extension applications in less than 2 years has encouraged another 30 plants to announce that they will submit license extension applications, and the industry and NRC ultimately expect that 80% of the U.S. plants will apply for and receive license extensions.
Until very recently, the environmental benefits of clean nuclear energy have gone largely unrecognized and unappreciated. There is now an increasing international dialog about the environmental impacts of various energy sources in light of the growing body of scientific evidence related to health effects of particulate and gaseous emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, and the potential climate effects from rising CO2 emissions. Generating one million kWhr of electricity produces about 150 tons of carbon from a natural gas-fired plant, 265 tons of carbon from a coal-fired plant, but essentially none from a nuclear plant. Nuclear energy's contribution to clean air is enormous; between 1973 and 1997 in the U.S. alone, the use of nuclear energy has avoided the emission of 82 million tons of SO2, 37 million tons of NOx (acid rain contributors), and nearly 2.8 billion tons of Carbon. Environmental quality is becoming an increasingly important part of U.S. energy policy, and continued operation of existing nuclear plants, improvement in the capacity of these plants, and even construction of new nuclear power plants will be an important part of future U.S. plans if we are to balance our economic growth needs with our environmental stewardship responsibilities. Of course, the issue of nuclear wastes, and the ultimate disposition of spent nuclear fuel, remains unresolved in the U.S., although this is more a political rather than a technical issue.
The Challenges Facing Nuclear Energy
The set of circumstances affecting the economic, regulatory, operations, safety and environmental performance of nuclear power have changed rather dramatically in the U.S. in the past two or three years. There are signs of similar changes around the world. These changes allow us to have a relatively positive vision for the future of nuclear power, both for the continued operation of existing plants and for new construction. This vision, however, is based on successful solutions being found for five major challenges:
- Nuclear power must remain economically competitive. Nuclear power must be capable of improving its economic performance in an increasingly deregulated world electricity market. Whereas the current operating economic parameters for existing nuclear plants is very good, the high capital cost ($1500-$2000/kW) and history of long construction, licensing and commissioning times for new nuclear plants do not stand up to competition from natural gas, for example, at $400-$500/kW.
- The public must remain confident in the safety of nuclear power plants and their fuel cycle. Although current light water reactor technology is very safe, the heavy role of operations and maintenance personnel opens a vulnerability to assuring continued safe operations, especially as the technology is deployed to countries with less sophisticated technical support infrastructures and different safety and work cultures.
- Nuclear wastes must be managed and the back-end fuel cycle issues resolved. The ongoing political logjam in the efforts to close out the nuclear waste disposition issue in the U.S., whether it involves opening a permanent or interim waste storage facility, can seemingly be resolved when we have the political will, leadership, and perhaps consensus to do so.
- The proliferation potential of the commercial nuclear power fuel cycle must be minimized. As nuclear power becomes more widely deployed worldwide, it is incumbent upon all of the nuclear supplier and operator nations to continually improve the proliferation resistance of the technology.
- We must assure a sustainable manpower supply for the future and preserve the critical nuclear technology infrastructure around the world. International cooperation is necessary to help assure that a sustainable manpower supply is retained and that the critical technical infrastructure at R&D institutes, National Laboratories, universities, and in industry, are preserved and utilized in an optimum fashion.
Generation IV, Responding to the Challenges
Nuclear power originated from a first generation of light water cooled plants in the 1950s and 60s. Those plants grew into the larger pressurized and boiling water reactors that are largely deployed around the world today. We are perhaps on the doorstep of the third generation of nuclear power technology that has evolved toward standardized and optimized light water reactor plants with passive safety features. The Advanced Boiling Water Reactor is a joint General Electric/Hitachi/Toshiba design that is being built and operated successfully in Japan and Taiwan. The ABB-CE System 80+ plant is an evolutionary PWR that is being built in Korea. The Westinghouse AP600 small passive PWR, and the European Pressurized Water Reactor have yet to find major markets. While these are fundamentally very fine plant designs, we have to ask ourselves why they have not found wider market acceptance, and how well they respond to the first four of the five challenges we outlined earlier. At the risk of oversimplifying a very complicated situation, I would offer that the major factor inhibiting Generation III reactors is cost, although I fully expect their market share to grow in the future.
Certainly the Generation IV nuclear reactor technology will have to be very responsive to the challenges of reduced cost (especially capital cost), improved safety (especially the public perception of safety), minimization of wastes to lessen the long term economic vulnerability to changes in waste disposition policies, and reduced potential for proliferation of nuclear materials. To the degree that cost is a determining factor in future electricity generation decisions, this leads us to propose that new (possibly revolutionary) reactor technology may be required to meet the capital cost requirements for the 21st century world market, and perhaps new approaches to "manufacturing" and rapidly deploying nuclear plants can play a pivotal role in reducing the capital cost of nuclear plants to future competitive levels. A fundamentally different way to attack the traditional economies of scale is to envision shifting nuclear plant construction from custom field construction, toward more of a manufactured product composed of world components that are assembled or field deployed much as the manufacture of airplanes is different from the design and construction of airports. Such a concept of manufactured nuclear plants probably leads one to look more carefully at smaller (100Mwe) size plants which coincidentally may find better market acceptance where capacity can be added incrementally to a system more closely paralleling the demand. Several advanced design concepts are already exploring the territory of smaller reactor plants, notably the South African Pebble Bed Modular Reactor and the Argentinean CAREM reactor. Conceptual designs for several small-plant-systems are being evaluated under the U.S. DOE Nuclear Energy Research Initiative.
In May of this year, DOE sponsored a Workshop attended by nearly 100 U.S. and international experts from the nuclear industry, academia, national laboratories, and international government and nongovernment organizations. The goal of the Workshop was to develop a first-order set of world requirements (more design goals) that Generation IV nuclear power systems should meet in order to offer a viable and competitive future nuclear energy option for both developing and developed countries. Briefly, the Workshop concluded:
- The busbar cost of electricity from a Generation IV nuclear system must be competitive with other electricity generation sources in the region or country in which it is deployed (natural gas is the competitive benchmark in the U.S. for example). This competitive cost is in the neighborhood of 3 cents/kWhr in the U.S.
- Generation IV systems must present the smallest possible risk to capital investment. Plant capital costs around $1000/kW and total construction times in the range of 3-4 years are highly desirable.
- Generation IV plants must be capable of demonstrating improved safety margins, not only to regulatory authorities in the country in which they are deployed, but also to the public. As such, a very low likelihood of core damage (core damage frequency of 10-6 for example) may be necessary but it is not sufficient. Generation IV designs may have to demonstrate, through integrated reactor testing that is open and transparent to the press and the public, that no severe core damage will result for any plausible initiating accident. This can be accomplished with core fuel and structural materials that do not melt at extreme accident temperatures, coolant materials that are not reactive, and using passive cooling and heat removal systems that constrain core temperatures in a manageable range under the worst of accident conditions. There should be no credible accident scenario leading to radioactive releases from a Generation IV plant that would require offsite emergency response. Finally, a substantial part of the history of both large and small accidents with light water reactors are associated with operations and maintenance rather than fundamental flaws in the technology. As such, Generation IV technology should be designed with full knowledge of operations and maintenance needs to be highly tolerant of human error.
- The full life cycle from ore to fuel fabrication to reactor operations to waste management and plant decommissioning and decontamination must be accounted for from the outset in a Generation IV system. In particular, complete solutions should be identified for all waste streams, and Generation IV technology should be designed to minimize the quantities of waste produced (for example, using very high burnup fuels).
- Generation IV advanced reactor systems, and their fuel cycle, should at a minimum preserve the status quo where material from the commercial nuclear fuel cycle is unattractive as a means of proliferation. Further, as Generation IV technology is intended to be deployed broadly around the world, intrinsic features of the reactor system should improve the proliferation resistant characteristics of the fuel cycle to disadvantage nuclear materials to the point where they are the least attractive route to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Currently, within DOE, methodologies are being developed to quantify and measure proliferation resistance, and technology pathways are being explored for consideration in future, Generation IV reactor systems.
At the present time, the United States Department of Energy is not committed to a particular technical approach to, or reactor concept for, Generation IV. Rather, DOE is trying to assemble the broad resources of the U.S. and international R&D community at laboratories, universities, and research institutes, along with the world nuclear industry, to build consensus behind the critical performance requirements for 21st century world deployment, and to build a solid technical foundation for a long-term sustainable international design and development program. Among the assembled world nuclear experts are proponents of a wide variety of reactor concepts. More importantly, research teams around the world are already examining a wide variety of reactor concepts to compare their performance against the Generation IV requirements. These include high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors in pebble bed or prismatic configurations, liquid metal cooled reactor systems with conventional sodium or lead-alloy coolants, advanced water cooled systems possibly employing supercritical steam, exotic coolants such as molten salts, and others. Ultra-long-life reactor cores are being explored that could raise the possibility of small reactors with cartridge cores that would not require refueling and could be field deployed and removed at the end of life to be replaced by a new system.
In each of these cases, Generation IV reactor systems present technical challenges and barriers whose resolution can enable the needed system performance. For example, coated particle fuel performance at high temperature and high burnup is a key to the performance of the high temperature, gas-cooled reactors. High temperature materials performance, and particularly corrosion in lead-alloy cooled systems, is an enabling technical issue. DOE's intention is to build a technology roadmap for the leading Generation IV concepts that will allow the U.S. R&D program to focus on the key enabling technical issues prior to selection of candidate Generation IV systems for demonstration and deployment.
The Path Forward
Because the future nuclear energy market is a world market, Generation IV technology will be a world product. As such, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, under the leadership of William Magwood IV, is organizing a broad international dialog related to the requirements and attributes of the next generation of reactor technology. An international Generation IV Working Group consisting of senior policy and technical personnel have begun to meet to discuss common goals, interests, and possibly to establish bilateral and multilateral relationships and agreements that will allow the next generation of technology to be developed faster and at lower cost than it could be by any one Nation.
The American Nuclear Society, consistent with its mission and goals to be the recognized leaders in the advancement of nuclear science and technology and to be an active contributor to nuclear policy issues, are active in the planning and execution of the Generation IV strategy. Several ANS officers and members are key participants in U.S. DOE planning and international working groups and forums dealing with Generation IV. ANS, as a respected professional society, can organize and facilitate technical forums for government, industry, the R&D and education community, and international leaders to discuss and debate the global issues important to nuclear energy and to support the formation of consensus and actions that foster a healthy future for the technology. ANS regularly sponsors workshops, technical sessions and topical meetings for the presentation of technical papers related to Generation IV and its technologies. The ANS Officers engage in regular meetings with senior officials from the U.S. Government in Washington DC in order to provide them with technical information with which to make sound policy decisions. Finally, ANS adopted a Position Statement late last year advocating the design, construction and operation of a Generation IV nuclear power plant in the near term.
Conclusions and Implications for the Future
The economic, operations, and safety performance of nuclear power in the U.S. and around the world is very good. This enables us to envision a future for nuclear power that is very bright so long as we can continue to respond to the economic, safety, nuclear waste, proliferation-resistant, and infrastructure challenges. These are challenges worthy of our best efforts.
