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Workshop
on Advanced
Reactors With Innovative Fuels
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Hosted by Oak Ridge National
Laboratory
under the auspices of the NEA Nuclear Science Committee
16-18 February 2005 -
Pollard Auditorium, Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
USA
The purpose of the workshop was to
exchange
information on R&D activities and to identify areas and research
tasks
where international co-operation can be strengthened. It is the third
in
the Advanced Reactors with Innovative Fuels (ARWIF) Series. The first,
held in October 1998, was hosted by the Paul Scherrer Institute in
Villigen,
Switzerland, the second, held from 22-24 October 2001, was hosted by
British
Nuclear Fuels Ltd in Chester, United Kingdom. The proceedings of that first
workshop and second
are also available.
With the renewed interest in advanced nuclear system and advanced fuel
cycles, this workshop proves to be very relevant and important for
establishing international consensus on research programmes.
Background
A new generation of reactor
designs are
being developed that are intended to meet the requirements of the 21st
Century. In the short term, the most important requirement is to
overcome
the relative non-competitiveness of current reactor designs in the
deregulated
market. For this purpose, evolutionary light water reactor (LWR)
designs
have been maturing and are being promoted actively. These are
specifically
designed to be less expensive to build and operate than the previous
generation
of LWRs, genuinely competitive with alternative forms of generation and
at the same time establish higher levels of safety. A new generation of
modular, small-to-medium (100-300 MWe/module), integral design water
cooled
reactors are under development. These are designed to be competitive
with
nuclear and non-nuclear power plants, to have significantly enhanced
safety,
to be proliferation resistant and to reduce the amount of radioactive
waste
produced. A different approach to improve competitiveness is the
re-emergence
of high temperature reactors (HTR) using gas turbine technology to give
higher thermal efficiencies, low construction and operating costs,
inherent
safety characteristics, and low proliferation risk.
In the longer term
other requirements related to long term sustainability will emerge. These requirements have been outlined in the
U.S. DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology’s Generation
IV
nuclear energy systems that offer advantages in the areas of economics,
safety
and reliability, sustainability, and that are commercially deployable
by
2030. The Generation IV International
Forum (GIF) has been formed to advance these goals on an international
level
combining the research and development resources of the participating
countries. The need to establish
sustainability of the fuel cycle to minimize waste has also led to the
development of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative in the United
States and continued research in Europe under the 6th
Framework Program. Under
these and other programs, the sustainability of the nuclear option is
being developed to ensure that
it is a viable option for the long term.
Therefore,
in this context, the following topics are of
interest are:
- advanced fuels
- advanced Light Water
Reactors
- High Temperature
Reactors
- fast spectrum reactors
- sub-critical systems
- plutonium burning
- minor actinide systems
- long-lived fission product
recycle
- radical innovative
systems
- advanced fuel cycle
options.
The
scope of the workshop comprised
reactor
physics, fuel performance and fuel material technology, core behaviour
and fuel cycle of advanced reactors with different types
of fuels or fuel lattices. Reactor types considered were water-cooled,
high temperature gas-cooled and fast spectrum reactors as well as
hybrid
reactors with fast and thermal neutron spectra. Emphasis was on
innovative
concepts and issues related to the reactor and fuel. In particular,
Generation IV systems.
Particular
goals of the workshop
were to identify research and development needs and the roles which can
be
played by existing experimental
facilities
as well as possible needs for new experimental facilities. The
conclusions
of the technical sessions were synthesised and discussed by a round
table on international co-operation to facilitate the introduction of
new
reactor systems.
Related
links
ARWIF
1998 recommendations (pdf, 91kb)
ARWIF
1998 proceedings
ARWIF-2001
Agenda and Abstracts
ARWIF-2001
SUMMARY, PANEL, PARTICIPANTS (pdf, 111kb)
Advanced
Reactors with Innovative Fuels (ARWIF-2001), Workshop Proceedings,
Chester, United Kingdom, 22-24 October 2001, OECD Paris 2002, ISBN
92-64-19847-4,
512 pages
Presentations made at
ARWIF-2005
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