This paper addresses the relative suitability of nuclear and solar in Australia as a primary future electricity option, since nuclear can use abundant Australian resources of U235, but the direct solar option is the biggest global resource. The background is that we are likely to need generation systems which use close to zero net emissions by mid-century. There are many energy options, but few...

Dr. Charles W. Nakhleh is a technical staff member in the Safeguards Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests include the applications of environmental monitoring to international safeguards, safeguarding of advanced nuclear fuel cycles, and policy and technology issues related to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nu...

Sweden has been intensively developing methods for long-term storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants for twenty-five years. A dedicated research program has been initiated and managed by the Swedish company SKB (Swedish Nuclear Fuels and Waste Management Co.) in collaboration with many research groups in different countries. After the interim storage, SKB plan to encapsulate the spent n...

High fossil fuel prices have rekindled interest in nuclear power. This paper identifies specific nuclear characteristics making it unattractive to merchant generators in liberalized electricity markets, and argues that non-fossil fuel technologies have an overlooked ‘option value’ given fuel and carbon price uncertainty. Stochastic optimization estimates the company option value of keeping open...

Nuclear energy is one of the most popular topics of today’s publication market. The literature about the pros and cons of nuclear power may easily fill a whole library. Is there anything new to add to this voluminous body of arguments and contra-arguments that would justify editing another book on nuclear energy? Andrew Blowers and David Pepper obviously felt that way and published a reader on ...

-Starting with information from Indian Point 1, a full size nuclear plant with fossil-fuel superheat which was built and operated, this paper examines the effect of superheat on both energy and exergy performance, as well as on the thermoeconomics of such plants. The study finds that adding superheat to the nearly saturated steam generated by water-cooled nuclear reactors increases the amount o...

Uranium oxides are fascinating materials not only owing to their technological significance in nuclear fuel applications [1] but also with respect to their dynamical properties [2], valence orbital configuration [3] and elementary excitations [4]. Understanding of the electronic, magnetic and crystal structural properties of uranium dioxide (UO2) was advanced significantly [5,6] after establish...

TRISO fuel particles, used in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR) are composite structures with a nuclear fuel kernel surrounded by alternating layers designed to contain fission products and compensate for radiation damage. As shown in Figure 1, a typical fuel particle contains an inner kernel of nuclear fuel, a low-density buffer layer of pyrocarbon, a dense layer of pyrocarbon coatin...

FOREWORD As any industry, nuclear industry generates a diverse range of waste which has to be managed in a safe manner to be acceptable to the public and the environment. The cost of waste management, the risks to the public and employees, and the detriment to the environment are dependent on the quantity and radioactive content of the waste generated. Waste minimization is a necessary activity...