Thomas, Steve

Abstract: In the late 1990s, a new generation of reactor designs evolved from existing designs was touted as solving the economic problems that led to the collapse of reactor ordering after the Chernobyl disaster. It was claimed these designs would be cheap and easy to build because they would be simpler and use passive safety, modular construction and standardisation. The US and UK governments were convinced by this and launched reactor construction programmes. However, 20 years on, the claims have proved false and the US and UK programmes are in disarray. The last hope for the nuclear industry appears to be that Chinese and Russian reactor vendors, with powerful support from their governments, will take over, providing reactors that are cheap but meet the safety standards required in Europe and North America. However, these vendors and their designs are largely unproven in open markets. There is also little evidence that their reactors will be cheap, there are concerns about quality and safety culture and there are national security concerns that may deter customers. New technologies, such as radical new ones, Generation IV, and Small Modular Reactors are unproven and, at best, a long way from commercial deployment. Full text available here.