Abstract
The United States current has a fleet of approximately 100 operating LWRs (thermal) supplying about 20% of the electricity demand of the country. Many of these units have or are anticipated, under plant life extension, to be in service a total of some 60 years. At the same time, forecasts on energy demand and deployment strategies of nuclear power plants (NPPs) over the next 100+ years, indicate that all 100 existing NPPs need to be replaced and as many as 100 additional NPPs need to be added to the fleet in order to meet energy demands and stem further accumulation of GHGs from fossil-fuel based energy sources. Conservatively, at least 20 and more likely 50-75 NPPs need to be newly deployed. Further, to make strides toward energy security and sustainability, the Global Nuclear Energy Project (GNEP) is promoting gradual integration of MOX burning LWRs, fuel reprocessing and deployment of fast reactors (FBRs/FRs) into the global fleet. Consideration of MOX, reprocessing and FBRs merit some consideration with respect to uranium ore resources over the time period of interest. In the present study we developed a basic temporal model over the next 30 to 60 years of existing NPPs and new NPPs to be deployed. Initially, we considered four reactor "categories" over the time period of interest as follows: 1) LWRs (currently operating but) to be decommissioned during the time period, 2) LWRs to be burn MOX fuel during the its operating lifetime, 3) new LWRs to replace decommissioned units and/or added to the fleet and 4) new FRs to replace decommissioned units and/or added to the fleet. To develop the model, we initially used the visual dynamic modeling software, VENSIM. In the study we considered a number of variables such as new NPP (LWRs and FRs) construction rate, decommissioning rate, conversion rate to MOX fueled and overall growth rate of the fleet. We will present results to date on various decommissioning, deployment and electricity demand scenarios relative to forecasts by recent study on the future of nuclear energy.
