Progress in Nuclear Power Technologies and Implications for ASEAN

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Peer-review under responsibility of Applied Energy Innovation Institute doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.07.571

Energy Procedia 75 ( 2015 ) 2852 – 2858

ScienceDirect

The 7

th

International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2015

Progress in Nuclear Power Technologies and Implications for

ASEAN

Victor Nian

a,

*

a_{Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore}

Abstract

Since its inception, the nuclear industry has committed strongly to enhancing the safety features of Light Water Reactors (LWRs). Unfortunately, the series of nuclear accidents from Three Mile Island, to Chernobyl, and Fukushima led to spiking fear and strong negative perceptions of nuclear power. Since then, the nuclear industry has initiated a new wave of scientific and technological innovation towards safer LWR as well as advanced reactor designs. Besides the research and development of Generation III+ and IV types and thorium based reactors, recent years have also seen revived interests in fusion reactors. Given the early stage of development, the economic and environmental performance of the advanced reactor systems are yet to be evaluated. For the fast developing economies in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), while environmental friendly energy sources are preferable, affordability of energy is critical. Given the resource and land constraints, several ASEAN members have expressed interest in nuclear power with Vietnam being the first one to build nuclear power reactors. However, the economic and environmental performance of the advanced reactors have not yet been determined due to their early stage of development. In addition, the safety and security of these advanced reactors combined with the under-developed governance on nuclear power are yet to be ascertained. Although some of the ASEAN members already have nuclear research programs, there is a lack of knowledge and expertise in civilian nuclear technology. If the advanced reactor technologies became commercially attractive, it is important to understand the implications for ASEAN’s nuclear movement. Through analyzing the economic (commercial costs) and environmental (life cycle carbon emissions) performance of possible advanced reactors, I provide a preliminary competitive landscape for the advanced reactor systems. Based on the findings, I outline the policy considerations for ASEAN when advanced nuclear power reactors become commercially available. Essentially, this paper seeks to address an important question: what are the key steps in preparing the region towards “safer nuclear” in the long term.

Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE

Keywords: governance, regional framework, throium, fusion, Generation IV, small modular reactor

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +65-6601-2076.

E-mail address: [email protected].

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Nomenclature

ADB Asian Development Bank

ANL Argonne National Laboratory

ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations

CCGT Combined Cycle Gas Turbine

DoE Department of Energy

EIA Energy Information Administration

F4E Fusion For Energy

GIF Generation-IV International Forum

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency

IEA International Energy Agency

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

LCOE Levelized Cost of Electricity

LMFR Liquid Metal-cooled Fast Reactor

MSR Molten Salt Reactor

NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory

R&D Research and Development

SMR Small Modular Reactor

TMI Three Mile Island

1. Introduction and Literature

Fukushima was a turning point in three ways. First of all, it caused rampant fear of nuclear power and a strong public rejection world-wide. It has led to countries like Germany and Switzerland completely phasing out nuclear power in their energy mix. Second, it was a wake-up call for the nuclear industry to invigorate science and technology innovation to build safer reactor systems. Finally and most importantly, it was an alarm for the regulators to review the development in nuclear governance.

Arguably, the fear of nuclear power comes primarily from its military origin and has been driven up by recent incidents, namely TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. According to Nian and Bauly [1], these accidents effectively made people wonder if the current technologies can be properly managed “to be safe”. On the technical side, the nuclear industry is seeking alternative design approaches including the SMR concept and accident-tolerant fuels, such as those in the liquid state. In particular, the MSR was portrayed as part of America’s long term energy future [2]. In addition, five R&D projects will be co-funded by the US DoE in support of advanced reactor technologies [3].

In terms of the R&D into advanced reactors, Areva Federal Services, in partnership with TerraPower Company, ANL and Texas A&M University is carrying out research for longer life cores, such as the Liquid LMFR fuel assemblies. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, in partnership with ANL, is looking into the development and modernization of next-generation probabilistic risk assessment methodologies. General

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Atomics, in partnership with the University of California at San Diego and the University of South Carolina is working on the fabrication and testing complex silicon carbide structures pertinent to advanced reactor concepts. NGNP Industry Alliance, in partnership with Areva, UltraSafe Nuclear Company, Westinghouse, and Texas A&M University is conducting high temperature gas reactor post-accident heat removal and testing. Westinghouse, in partnership with ANL and University of Pittsburg is into the development of thermo-acoustic sensors for sodium-cooled fast reactors.

Recent years have seen development in fusion reactors. In particular, the University of Washington designed a fusion reactor based on imposed-dynamo current drive and FLiBe (a form of molten salt) blanket system for first wall cooling, neutron moderation and tritium breeding. According to Sutherland and others [4], the overall plant efficiency reached about 40% with an estimated capital cost of $2,713 per kWe. The defense company Lockheed Martin has also proposed a concept of a compact fusion reactor of 100 MWe [5]. The company has already filed several patents in their design approach and aimed for commercial deployment within 10 years. In France, an experimental fusion reactor project, named Iter is being pursued as a joint effort by China, F4E, France, India, Japan, Korea, and US. The GIF envisioned that the Generation IV types of reactors would arrive as early as 2030 [6].

Nuclear, being an attractive option as evaluated by Nian and Chou [7], is being pursued by Vietnam and under serious consideration by Thailand. However, there is still much uncertainty about the safety, security, and safeguard at the regional level. If the present LWR technologies were deemed unsafe and advanced reactor technologies were to be pursued, it is important to understand the implications associated with the progress in reactor technologies in ASEAN. In this paper, I provide a quick assessment of the economic, environment, and safety factors. The economic factors are assessed for capital investment and the running cost in the LCOE approach. The environmental factor is assessed for life cycle carbon emissions. The safety factor is assessed in a different approach by looking at the top-down governance perspective.

2. Beyond Zero Emission by 2100

In the fifth assessment report, the IPCC [8] outlined its ambition of zero emissions by 2100 in which nuclear would play an important role. Why does nuclear remain relevant to ASEAN? The regional energy supplies are barely keeping up with the soaring demand driven by the fast economic development. Both the IEA [9] and the ADB [10] are projecting the dire situation of the ASEAN region becoming a net-energy importer by 2030. With affordability being of top consideration, coal is projected to enter ASEAN’s fuel mix to address diversification, which will introduce additional burdens to the environment.

Although ASEAN members are embracing the “green growth” strategy, they are facing greater challenges than decarbonization. ASEAN has a total land area of 4.47 million km2_{with a comparatively}

higher percentage of forest coverage. With continuous urban and agricultural development, these natural carbon sinks are shrinking. Renewables are gaining momentum but the physical limitations including costs and conversion efficiency prohibit their large scale deployment. With the current state of technologies, the IEA [11] estimated that the technical potential for renewable deployment in ASEAN is approximately 150 GW of hydropower, 90 GW of bioenergy, tens of gigawatts of wind suitable for only Vietnam and the Philippines, but minimum grid connected PV and solar thermal. With limited access to advanced technologies, the region might only achieve a small fraction of the technical potential. With the intermittent nature of solar and wind, and geographical dependence of hydropower and geothermal, ASEAN has limited options to diversify the supply portfolio, especially at the base-load. Thus, nuclear power becomes the only clean energy source for diversifying the base-load electricity supply.

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3. The Prospect of Advanced Reactor Technologies

The prospect of nuclear is evaluated against economic, environment, and safety and security factors.

3.1. Economic factor

The economic factor is evaluated based on capital and levelized cost (LCOE in particular). The methodology for calculating the LCOEs can be found in [12]. Based on the information published in [4, 7, 12-15], the capital costs of nuclear technologies are expected to be higher than most base-load technologies including those with carbon capture (Fig. 2). At 10% discount rate, the LCOE calculation tends to favor nuclear technologies. However, it is noteworthy that the LCOEs can vary significantly with discount rate. In brief, as the discount rate increases, the competitiveness of nuclear decreases when measured by LCOE.

Fig. 1 Capital and levelized costs of alternative power generation technologies

3.2. Environment factor

In this paper, I focus on the life cycle carbon emissions for evaluating the environmental performance of nuclear power. Based on the information reported in [16-19], SMR and nuclear fusion are the most competitive base-load electricity generation technologies (Fig. 3). However, one also needs to note that there are other environmental considerations, including pollution, radiation, and disturbance to the ecosystem. These have not been evaluated in this paper but they deserve further investigations in a life cycle approach.

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Fig. 2 Life cycle carbon emission factors of alternative power generation technologies 3.3. Safety and security factor

There are concerns that fission reactors, regardless of their size, may cause severe radiological emergencies and the proliferation of weapon materials. Advanced fuel cycles, such as MSRs can help address these concerns given their liquid state core design and the proliferation resistant element of thorium. Nuclear fusion may help address radiation protection, but additional safety barriers may be required depending on the reactor capacity. The fuel cycle associated with nuclear fusion is also resilient against proliferation of weapon materials. Thus, the compact fusion reactor concept as conceived by Lockheed Martin could be a competitive future technology.

4. Implications for Regional Nuclear Governance

4.1. Capability development

Despite the nuclear research programs in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, there is a lack of expertise in the region, especially in nuclear safety and security. For the foreseeable future, ASEAN will continue to depend on foreign nuclear technologies and fuel supplies. In the long term, diffusion and assimilation of foreign technologies will be crucial but there would be a steep learning curve.

4.2. Regional cooperative framework

Besides technical capability development, barriers from the non-interference policy need to be removed. The cooperative framework should at least cover three critical aspects: (i) information sharing – transparent reporting under the guidelines of the IAEA; (ii) collective responsibility on nuclear safety, security, and safeguard – legal framework governing malicious activities, protection against extreme external events, and safeguard against proliferation of weapon materials; and (iii) preparedness to severe radiological emergency – identify the worse-case accident impacts and develop response plans in a regional grouping manner.

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5. Conclusion

Based on my preliminary assessment of the economic, environmental, and safety and security factors, advanced nuclear power technologies appear to be competitive against all other alternatives. Despite such competitiveness, regional effort is required in order to achieve “safer nuclear” in ASEAN.

References

[1] V. Nian, J.A. Bauly, Nuclear Power Developments: Could Small Modular Reactor Power Plants be a “Game Changer”? – The ASEAN Perspective, Energy Procedia, (2014).

[2] P. Kelly-Detwiler, Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors: Part of Amercan's Long-Term Energy Future?, in: Forbes, 2014.

[3] WNN, DoE funding for advanced reactor research, in: World Nuclear News, World Nuclear News, 2014.

[4] D.A. Sutherland, T.R. Jarboe, K.D. Morgan, M. Pfaff, E.S. Lavine, Y. Kamikawa, M. Hughes, P. Andrist, G. Marklin, B.A. Nelson, The dynomak: An advanced spheromak reactor concept with imposed-dynamo current drive and next-generation nuclear power technologies, Fusion Engineering and Design, 89 (2014) 412-425.

[5] LMT, Lockheed Martin Pursuing Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Concept, in, Lockheed Martin, 2014.

[6] GIF, Technology Roadmap Update for Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems, in, Generation IV International Forum, 2014, pp. 66.

[7] V. Nian, S.K. Chou, The state of nuclear power two years after Fukushima – The ASEAN perspective, Applied Energy, 136 (2014) 838-848.

[8] IPCC, Climate Change 2014: IPCC Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report, in, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014.

[9] IEA, Southeast Asia Energy Outlook, in: World Energy Outlook Special Report, International Energy Agency, 2013, pp. 138.

[10] ADB, Energy outlook for Asia and the Pacific, Asian Development Bank, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, 2013.

[11] IEA, Deploying Renewables in Southeast Asia - Trends and potentials, in, International Energy Agency, 2010.

[12] IEA, Projected Costs of Generating Electricity 2010 Edition, in, International Energy Agency, 2010. [13] NREL, Open Energy Information, in, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2015.

[14] EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 2013 with Projection to 2040, U.S. Energy Information Administration, USA, 2013.

[15] EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 2014 with Projection to 2040, U.S. Energy Information Administration, USA, 2014.

[16] K. Tokimatsu, H. Hondo, Y. Ogawa, K. Okano, K. Yamaji, M. Katsurai, Evaluation of CO 2 emissions in the life cycle of tokamak fusion power reactors, Nucl Fusion, 40 (2000) 653.

[17] IPCC, Working Group III contribution to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014.

[18] V. Nian, S.K. Chou, B. Su, J. Bauly, Life cycle analysis on carbon emissions from power generation – The nuclear energy example, Applied Energy, 118 (2014) 68-82.

[19] V. Nian, Life cycle analysis of electricity generation systems with implications on climate change policy, in: Mechanical Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 2014.

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Biography

Dr. Victor Nian is a fellow at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore. His research areas include life cycle analysis, energy system modelling, energy and carbon audit, global nuclear energy development, nuclear safety, security, and safeguard, management of technology, and smart city development. (45 words)