Current Status and Future Developments in Nuclear-Power Industry of the World

Abstract

It is well known that electrical-power generation plays the key role in advances in industry, agriculture, technology, and standard of living. Also, strong power industry with diverse energy sources is very important for a country's independence. In general, electrical energy can be mainly generated from: (1) nonrenewable energy sources (75.5% of the total electricity generation) such as coal (38.3%), natural gas (23.1%), oil (3.7%), and nuclear (10.4%); and (2) renewable energy sources (24.5%) such as hydro, biomass, wind, geothermal, solar, and marine power. Today, the main sources for electrical-energy generation are: (1) thermal power (61.4%)—primarily using coal and secondarily using natural gas; (2) “large” hydro-electric plants (16.6%); and (3) nuclear power (10.4%). The balance of the energy sources (11.6%) is from using oil, biomass, wind, geothermal, and solar, and has visible impact just in a few countries. This paper presents the current status of electricity generation in the world, various sources of industrial electricity generation and role of nuclear power with a comparison of nuclear-energy systems to other energy systems. A comparison of the latest data on electricity generation with those several years old shows that world usage of coal, gas, nuclear, and oil has decreased by 1–2%, but usage of renewables has increased by 1% for hydro and 2% for other renewable sources. Unfortunately, within last years, electricity generation with nuclear power has decreased from 14% before the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) severe accident in March 2011 to about 10%. Therefore, it is important to evaluate current status of nuclear-power industry and to make projections on near (5–10 yr) and far away (10–25 yr and beyond) future trends.

Current Status of Reactors Deployment and Small Modular Reactors Development in the World

“…This paper is a logical continuation of our previous publications on the current status of nuclear-power industry of the world [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Unfortunately, within last 9 years, electricity generation with nuclear power has decreased from 14% before the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) severe accident in March of 2011 to about 10% (see Fig.…”

“…Due to emerging climate change concerns coupled with growing global energy demand, eventually the world needs to move toward manufacturing, transportation, heating and electricity generation with lower carbon emissions including increased use of nuclear power, and hydro, wind, geothermal, solar, and tidal sources [1][2][3][4]. However, only nuclear power, is high reliability, and of potentially large installed capacity that can operate with high capacity factors (up to 90 -100%).…”

Supercritical-Fluids Thermophysical Properties and Heat Transfer in Power-Engineering Applications

“…This change, that is, substantially higher operating pressures in the Rankine cycle from subcritical ones, and, correspondingly to that, higher inlet-turbine temperature up to 625°C, has allowed increasing of thermal efficiencies from 40-43% to 50-55% (gross) (in total by 7-15%). Currently, SCP coal-fired thermal power plants (world electricity generation with coal 38%-the largest source for electricity generation; in India-77%; China-65%; Germany-37%; and in USA-30%) are the second ones by thermal efficiencies after gas-fired combined-cycle ThPPs (world electricity generation with natural gas 23%-second largest source for electricity generation; in Russia-59%; UK-44%; Italy-42%; and in USA-34%) [4,5]. More details on ThPPs can be found in Pioro and Kirillov [8] and many other sources.…”

“…Up to 32% Table 1. Typical ranges of thermal efficiencies (gross) of modern thermal and nuclear power plants (NPPs) [4,5] (for details including schematics and T-s diagrams, see Handbook [6] and Dragunov et al [7]).…”

“…Therefore, NPPs with various designs of water-cooled reactors at subcritical pressures cannot compete with modern advanced ThPPs. Also, it should be noted that currently, water-cooled reactors are the vast majority of nuclear-power reactors in the world [14,15] Gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) or high-temperature reactor (HTR) NPP (reactor coolant-helium (SCF): P = 9 MPa and T in /T out = 490/850°C; primary power cycle-direct SCP Brayton helium-gas-turbine cycle (see Figure 7); possible back-up-indirect SCP Brayton or combined cycles (see Figures 8 and 9))…”