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2012 World electricity generation by fuels (IEA, 2014)

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat, which most frequently is then used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of elements in the actinide series of the periodic table. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators. The possibility of generating electricity from nuclear fusion is still at a research phase with no commercial applications. This article mostly deals with nuclear fission power for electricity generation.

Nuclear power is one of the leading low carbon power generation methods of producing electricity. In terms of total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated, nuclear power has emission values comparable or lower than renewable energy. From the beginning of its commercialization in the 1970s, nuclear power prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and the emission of about 64 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that would have otherwise resulted from the burning of fossil fuels in thermal power stations.

As of April 2018, there are 449 operable fission reactors in the world, with a combined electrical capacity of 394 gigawatt (GW). Additionally, there are 58 reactors under construction and 154 reactors planned, with a combined capacity of 63 GW and 157 GW, respectively. Most of reactors under construction are of generation III reactor design, with the majority in Asia. Over 300 more reactors are proposed.

There is a social debate about nuclear power. Proponents, such as the World Nuclear Association and Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, contend that nuclear power is a safe, sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions. Opponents, such as Greenpeace International and NIRS, contend that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment.

Far-reaching fission power reactor accidents, or accidents that resulted in medium to long-lived fission product contamination of inhabited areas, have occurred in Generation I and II reactor designs. These include the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, and the more contained Three Mile Island accident in 1979. There have also been some nuclear submarine accidents. In terms of lives lost per unit of energy generated, analysis has determined that fission-electric reactors have caused fewer fatalities per unit of energy generated than the other major sources of energy generation. Energy production from coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydroelectricity has caused a greater number of fatalities per unit of energy generated due to air pollution and energy accident effects.

Collaboration on research & developments towards greater passive nuclear safety, efficiency and recycling of spent fuel in future Generation IV reactors presently includes Euratom and the co-operation of more than 10 permanent countries globally.

History

Origins

In 1932 physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that when lithium atoms were "split" by protons from a proton accelerator, immense amounts of energy were released in accordance with the principle of mass–energy equivalence. However, he and other nuclear physics pioneers Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein believed harnessing the power of the atom for practical purposes anytime in the near future was unlikely, with Rutherford labeling such expectations "moonshine."

The same year, his doctoral student James Chadwick discovered the neutron, which was immediately recognized as a potential tool for nuclear experimentation because of its lack of an electric charge. Experimentation with bombardment of materials with neutrons led Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie to discover induced radioactivity in 1934, which allowed the creation of radium-like elements at much less the price of natural radium. Further work by Enrico Fermi in the 1930s focused on using slow neutrons to increase the effectiveness of induced radioactivity. Experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons led Fermi to believe he had created a new, transuranic element, which was dubbed hesperium.

In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, along with Austrian physicist Lise Meitner and Meitner's nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, conducted experiments with the products of neutron-bombarded uranium, as a means of further investigating Fermi's claims. They determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium atoms into two roughly equal pieces, contradicting Fermi. This was an extremely surprising result: all other forms of nuclear decay involved only small changes to the mass of the nucleus, whereas this process—dubbed "fission" as a reference to biology—involved a complete rupture of the nucleus. Numerous scientists, including Leó Szilárd, who was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction could result. Once this was experimentally confirmed and announced by Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1939, scientists in many countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union) petitioned their governments for support of nuclear fission research, just on the cusp of World War II, for the development of a nuclear weapon.

First nuclear reactor

In the United States, where Fermi and Szilárd had both emigrated, the discovery of the nuclear chain reaction led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. This work became part of the Manhattan Project, a massive secret U.S. government military project to make enriched uranium and by building large production reactors to produce (breed) plutonium for use in the first nuclear weapons. The United States would test an atom bomb in July 1945 with the Trinity test, and eventually two such weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In August 1945, the first widely distributed account of nuclear energy, in the form of the pocketbook The Atomic Age, discussed the peaceful future uses of nuclear energy and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused. Nobel laurette Glenn Seaborg, who later chaired the Atomic Energy Commission, is quoted as saying "there will be nuclear powered earth-to-moon shuttles, nuclear powered artificial hearts, plutonium heated swimming pools for SCUBA divers, and much more".

The United Kingdom, Canada, and the USSR proceeded to research and develop nuclear industries over the course of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW. Work was also strongly researched in the United States on nuclear marine propulsion, with a test reactor being developed by 1953 (eventually, the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, would launch in 1955). In 1953, American President Dwight Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, emphasizing the need to develop "peaceful" uses of nuclear power quickly. This was followed by the 1954 Amendments to the Atomic Energy Act which allowed rapid declassification of U.S. reactor technology and encouraged development by the private sector.

The controllability of nuclear power reactors depends on the fact that a small fraction of neutrons resulting from fission are delayed, which makes the reactions easier to control. These are neutrons emitted by the decay of certain fission products. Operating in this delayed critical state, changes in reaction rates occur slowly enough to permit mechanical feedback to control those reaction rates.

Early years

On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 megawatts of electric power.

Later in 1954, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (U.S. AEC, forerunner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the United States Department of Energy) spoke of electricity in the future being "too cheap to meter". Strauss was very likely referring to hydrogen fusion —which was secretly being developed as part of Project Sherwood at the time—but Strauss's statement was interpreted as a promise of very cheap energy from nuclear fission. The U.S. AEC itself had issued far more realistic testimony regarding nuclear fission to the U.S. Congress only months before, projecting that "costs can be brought down... ... about the same as the cost of electricity from conventional sources..."

In 1955 the United Nations' "First Geneva Conference", then the world's largest gathering of scientists and engineers, met to explore the technology. In 1957 EURATOM was launched alongside the European Economic Community (the latter is now the European Union). The same year also saw the launch of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale, England, was opened in 1956 with an initial capacity of 50 MW (later 200 MW). The first commercial nuclear generator to become operational in the United States was the Shippingport Reactor (Pennsylvania, December 1957).

One of the first organizations to develop nuclear power was the U.S. Navy, for the purpose of propelling submarines and aircraft carriers. The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was put to sea in December 1954. As of 2016, the U.S. Navy submarine fleet is made up entirely of nuclear-powered vessels, with 75 submarines in service. Two U.S. nuclear submarines, USS Scorpion and USS Thresher, have been lost at sea. The Russian Navy is currently (2016) estimated to have 61 nuclear submarines in service; eight Soviet and Russian nuclear submarines have been lost at sea. This includes the Soviet submarine K-19 reactor accident in 1961 which resulted in 8 deaths and more than 30 other people were over-exposed to radiation. The Soviet submarine K-27 reactor accident in 1968 resulted in 9 fatalities and 83 other injuries. Moreover, Soviet submarine K-429 sank twice, but was raised after each incident. Several serious nuclear and radiation accidents have involved nuclear submarine mishaps.

The U.S. Army also had a nuclear power program, beginning in 1954. The SM-1 Nuclear Power Plant, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was the first power reactor in the United States to supply electrical energy to a commercial grid (VEPCO), in April 1957, before Shippingport. The SL-1 was a U.S. Army experimental nuclear power reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho. It underwent a steam explosion and meltdown in January 1961, which killed its three operators. In the Soviet Union at The Mayak Production Association facility there were a number of accidents, including an explosion, that released 50–100 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste, contaminating a huge territory in the eastern Urals and causing numerous deaths and injuries. The Soviet government kept this accident secret for about 30 years. The event was eventually rated at 6 on the seven-level INES scale (third in severity only to the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Development

Installed nuclear capacity initially rose relatively quickly, rising from less than 1 gigawatt (GW) in 1960 to 100 GW in the late 1970s, and 300 GW in the late 1980s. Since the late 1980s worldwide capacity has risen much more slowly, reaching 366 GW in 2005. Between around 1970 and 1990, more than 50 GW of capacity was under construction (peaking at over 150 GW in the late 1970s and early 1980s) — in 2005, around 25 GW of new capacity was planned. More than two-thirds of all nuclear plants ordered after January 1970 were eventually cancelled. A total of 63 nuclear units were canceled in the United States between 1975 and 1980.

During the 1970s and 1980s rising economic costs (related to extended construction times largely due to regulatory changes and pressure-group litigation) and falling fossil fuel prices made nuclear power plants then under construction less attractive. In the 1980s (U.S.) and 1990s (Europe), flat load growth and electricity liberalization also made the addition of large new baseload capacity unattractive.

The 1973 oil crisis had a significant effect on countries, such as France and Japan, which had relied more heavily on oil for electric generation (39% and 73% respectively) to invest in nuclear power.

Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. These concerns related to nuclear accidents, nuclear proliferation, high cost of nuclear power plants, nuclear terrorism and radioactive waste disposal. In the early 1970s, there were large protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, Germany. The project was cancelled in 1975 and anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to nuclear power in other parts of Europe and North America. By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism had moved beyond local protests and politics to gain a wider appeal and influence, and nuclear power became an issue of major public protest. Although it lacked a single co-ordinating organization, and did not have uniform goals, the movement's efforts gained a great deal of attention. In some countries, the nuclear power conflict "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies".

In France, between 1975 and 1977, some 175,000 people protested against nuclear power in ten demonstrations. In West Germany, between February 1975 and April 1979, some 280,000 people were involved in seven demonstrations at nuclear sites. Several site occupations were also attempted. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, some 120,000 people attended a demonstration against nuclear power in Bonn. In May 1979, an estimated 70,000 people, including then governor of California Jerry Brown, attended a march and rally against nuclear power in Washington, D.C. Anti-nuclear power groups emerged in every country that has had a nuclear power programme.

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl

Health and safety concerns, the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster played a part in stopping new plant construction in many countries, although the public policy organization, the Brookings Institution states that new nuclear units, at the time of publishing in 2006, had not been built in the United States because of soft demand for electricity, and cost overruns on nuclear plants due to regulatory issues and construction delays. By the end of the 1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as dramatically as once believed. Eventually, more than 120 reactor orders in the United States were ultimately cancelled and the construction of new reactors ground to a halt. A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes magazine commented on the overall failure of the U.S. nuclear power program, saying it "ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history".

Unlike the Three Mile Island accident, the much more serious Chernobyl accident did not increase regulations affecting Western reactors since the Chernobyl reactors were of the problematic RBMK design only used in the Soviet Union, for example lacking "robust" containment buildings. Many of these RBMK reactors are still in use today. However, changes were made in both the reactors themselves (use of a safer enrichment of uranium) and in the control system (prevention of disabling safety systems), amongst other things, to reduce the possibility of a duplicate accident.

An international organization to promote safety awareness and professional development on operators in nuclear facilities was created: World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO).

Opposition in Ireland and Poland prevented nuclear programs there, while Austria (1978), Sweden (1980) and Italy (1987) (influenced by Chernobyl) voted in referendums to oppose or phase out nuclear power. In July 2009, the Italian Parliament passed a law that cancelled the results of an earlier referendum and allowed the immediate start of the Italian nuclear program. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster a one-year moratorium was placed on nuclear power development, followed by a referendum in which over 94% of voters (turnout 57%) rejected plans for new nuclear power.

Nuclear renaissance

Since about 2001 the term nuclear renaissance has been used to refer to a possible nuclear power industry revival, driven by rising fossil fuel prices and new concerns about meeting greenhouse gas emission limits. Since commercial nuclear energy began in the mid-1950s, 2008 was the first year that no new nuclear power plant was connected to the grid, although two were connected in 2009.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

Following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, and a subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant suffered multiple core meltdowns due to failure of the emergency cooling system for lack of electricity supply. This resulted in the most serious nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident prompted a re-examination of nuclear safety and nuclear energy policy in many countries and raised questions among some commentators over the future of the renaissance. Germany approved plans to close all its reactors by 2022, and Italy re-affirmed its ban on nuclear power in a referendum. China, Switzerland, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand, United Kingdom, and the Philippines reviewed their nuclear power programs.

In 2011 the International Energy Agency halved its prior estimate of new generating capacity to be built by 2035. Nuclear power generation had the biggest ever fall year-on-year in 2012, with nuclear power plants globally producing 2,346 TWh of electricity, a drop of 7% from 2011. This was caused primarily by the majority of Japanese reactors remaining offline that year and the permanent closure of eight reactors in Germany.

Post-Fukushima

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident sparked controversy about the importance of the accident and its effect on nuclear's future. The Fukushima crisis prompted countries with nuclear power to review the safety of their reactor fleet and reconsider the speed and scale of planned nuclear expansions. However, Progress Energy Chairman/CEO Bill Johnson made the observation that "Today there’s an even more compelling case that greater use of nuclear power is a vital part of a balanced energy strategy". In 2011, The Economist opined that nuclear power "looks dangerous, unpopular, expensive and risky", and that "it is replaceable with relative ease and could be forgone with no huge structural shifts in the way the world works". Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs disagreed, claiming combating climate change would require an expansion of nuclear power. Investment banks were also critical of nuclear soon after the accident.

In September 2011, German engineering giant Siemens announced it will withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry as a response to the Fukushima accident.

In February 2012, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the construction of two additional reactors at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, the first reactors to be approved in over 30 years since the Three Mile Island accident. In October 2016, Watts Bar 2 became the first new United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996.

In 2013 Japan signed a deal worth $22 billion, in which Mitsubishi Heavy Industries would build four modern Atmea reactors for Turkey. In August 2015, following 4 years of near zero fission-electricity generation, Japan began restarting its nuclear reactors, after safety upgrades were completed, beginning with Sendai Nuclear Power Plant.

By 2015, the IAEA's outlook for nuclear energy had become more promising. "Nuclear power is a critical element in limiting greenhouse gas emissions," the agency noted, and "the prospects for nuclear energy remain positive in the medium to long term despite a negative impact in some countries in the aftermath of the accident...it is still the second-largest source worldwide of low-carbon electricity. And the 72 reactors under construction at the start of last year were the most in 25 years." According to the World Nuclear Association, the global trend is for new nuclear power stations coming online to be balanced by the number of old plants being retired.

As of 2015, 441 reactors had a worldwide net electric capacity of 382,9 GW, with 67 new nuclear reactors under construction. Over half of the 67 total being built were in Asia, with 28 in China, where there is an urgent need to control pollution from coal plants. Eight new grid connections were completed by China in 2015.

Future of the industry

As of January 2016, there are over 150 nuclear reactors planned, equivalent to nearly half of capacity at that time. However, while investment on upgrades of existing plant and life-time extensions continues, investment in new nuclear is declining, reaching a 5-year-low in 2017.

In 2015, the International Energy Agency reported that the Fukushima accident had a strongly negative effect on nuclear power, yet nuclear power prospects are positive in the medium to long term mainly thanks to new construction in Asia. In 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected for its “base case” that world nuclear power generation would increase from 2,344 terawatt-hour (TWh) in 2012 to 4,501 TWh in 2040. Most of the predicted increase was expected to be in Asia.

The future of nuclear power varies greatly between countries, depending on government policies. Some countries, many of them in Europe, such as Germany, Belgium, and Lithuania, have adopted policies of nuclear power phase-out. At the same time, some Asian countries, such as China and India, have committed to rapid expansion of nuclear power. Many other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, have policies in between. Japan was a major generator of nuclear power before the Fukushima accident, but the extent to which it will resume its nuclear program after the accident is uncertain. While South Korea has a large nuclear power industry, the new government in 2017 decided to gradually phase out nuclear power as reactors that are now operating or under construction close after 40 years of operations.

The nuclear power industry in western nations has a history of construction delays, cost overruns, plant cancellations, and nuclear safety issues despite significant government subsidies and support. Many commentators therefore argue that nuclear power is currently impractical in western countries because of high costs, popular opposition, and regulatory uncertainty. This has been demonstrated by recent financial problems of western nuclear companies, most prominently the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in March 2017 because of US$9 billion of losses from nuclear construction projects in the United States.

Much more new build activity is occurring in Asian countries like South Korea, India and China. In March 2016, China had 30 reactors in operation, 24 under construction and plans to build more.

In the United States, licenses of almost half its reactors have been extended to 60 years, The U.S. NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy have initiated research into Light water reactor sustainability which is hoped will lead to allowing extensions of reactor licenses beyond 60 years, provided that safety can be maintained, to increase energy security and preserve low-carbon generation sources. Research into nuclear reactors that can last 100 years, known as Centurion Reactors, is being conducted.

According to the World Nuclear Association, globally during the 1980s one new nuclear reactor started up every 17 days on average, and in the year 2015 it was estimated that this rate could in theory eventually increase to one every 5 days, although no plans exist for that.

Nuclear power plants

Just as many conventional thermal power stations generate electricity by harnessing the thermal energy released from burning fossil fuels, nuclear power plants convert the energy released from the nucleus of an atom via nuclear fission that takes place in a nuclear reactor. The heat is removed from the reactor core by a cooling system that uses the heat to generate steam, which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator producing electricity.

A fission nuclear power plant is generally composed of a nuclear reactor, in which the nuclear reactions generating heat take place; a cooling system, which removes the heat from inside the reactor; a steam turbine, which transforms the heat in mechanical energy; an electric generator, which transform the mechanical energy into electrical energy.

Installed capacity and electricity production

Nuclear fission power stations, excluding the contribution from naval nuclear fission reactors, provided 11% of the world's electricity in 2012, somewhat less than that generated by hydro-electric stations at 16%. Since electricity accounts for about 25% of humanity's energy usage with the majority of the rest coming from fossil fuel reliant sectors such as transport, manufacture and home heating, nuclear fission's contribution to the global final energy consumption was about 2.5%. This is a little more than the combined global electricity production from wind, solar, biomass and geothermal power, which together provided 2% of global final energy consumption in 2014.

In 2013, the IAEA reported that there were 437 operational civil fission-electric reactors in 31 countries, although not every reactor was producing electricity. In addition, there were approximately 140 naval vessels using nuclear propulsion in operation, powered by about 180 reactors.

Regional differences in the use of nuclear power are large. The United States produces the most nuclear energy in the world, with nuclear power providing 19% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—80% as of 2006. In the European Union as a whole nuclear power provides 30% of the electricity. Nuclear power is the single largest low-carbon electricity source in the United States, and accounts for two-thirds of the European Union's low-carbon electricity. Nuclear energy policy differs among European Union countries, and some, such as Austria, Estonia, Ireland and Italy, have no active nuclear power stations. In comparison, France has a large number of these plants, with 16 multi-unit stations in current use.

Many military and some civilian (such as some icebreakers) ships use nuclear marine propulsion. A few space vehicles have been launched using nuclear reactors: 33 reactors belong to the Soviet RORSAT series and one was the American SNAP-10A.

International research is continuing into additional uses of process heat such as hydrogen production (in support of a hydrogen economy), for desalinating sea water, and for use in district heating systems.

Industry

The nuclear industry consists of a number of companies, organizations, governmental and international bodies. The main fields of the industry include nuclear reactor building and operation; uranium mining and nuclear fuel production; nuclear waste storage and processing; research and development. Other components of the nuclear industry include nuclear regulators and nuclear industry national and international associations.

Economics

The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, since there are diverging views on this topic, and multibillion-dollar investments depend on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low fuel costs. Comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants as well as the future costs of fossil fuels and renewables as well as for energy storage solutions for intermittent power sources. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs. On the other hand, measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.

Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must also take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties. To date all operating nuclear power plants were developed by state-owned or regulated electric utility monopolies where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating performance, fuel price, accident liability and other factors were borne by consumers rather than suppliers. In addition, because the potential liability from a nuclear accident is so great, the full cost of liability insurance is generally limited/capped by the government, which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded constituted a significant subsidy. Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.

Although nuclear power plants can vary their output, the electricity is generally less favorably priced when doing so. Nuclear power plants are therefore typically run as much as possible to keep the cost of the generated electrical energy as low as possible, supplying mostly base-load electricity.

Internationally the price of nuclear plants rose 15% annually in 1970–1990. Yet, nuclear power has total costs in 2012 of about $96 per megawatt hour (MWh), most of which involves capital construction costs, compared with solar power at $130 per MWh, and natural gas at the low end at $64 per MWh. Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, costs are expected to increase for currently operating and new nuclear power plants, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management and elevated design basis threats.

Life cycle of nuclear fuel

A nuclear reactor is only part of the fuel life-cycle for nuclear power. The process starts with mining (see Uranium mining). Uranium mines are underground, open-pit, or in-situ leach mines. In any case, the uranium ore is extracted, usually converted into a stable and compact form such as yellowcake, and then transported to a processing facility. Here, the yellowcake is converted to uranium hexafluoride, which is then generally enriched using various techniques. Some reactor designs can also use natural uranium without enrichment. The enriched uranium, containing more than the natural 0.7% U-235, is generally used to make rods of the proper composition and geometry for the particular reactor that the fuel is destined for. In modern light-water reactors the fuel rods will spend about 3 operational cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away. After about 5 years in a spent fuel pool the spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed.

Conventional fuel resources

Uranium is a fairly common element in the Earth's crust: it is approximately as common as tin or germanium, and is about 40 times more common than silver. Uranium is present in trace concentrations in most rocks, dirt, and ocean water, but can be economically extracted currently only where it is present in high concentrations. Still, the world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of 130 USD/kg, are enough to last for between 70 and 100 years.

According to the OECD in 2006, there was an expected 85 years worth of uranium in already identified resources at current utilization rates. In the OECD's red book of 2011, known uranium resources have grown by 12.5% since 2008 due to increased exploration, with this increase translating into greater than a century of uranium available if the rate of use were to continue at the 2011 level. The OECD also estimate 670 years of economically recoverable uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ores assuming current use rate. In a similar manner to every other natural metal resource, for every tenfold increase in the cost per kilogram of uranium, there is a three-hundredfold increase in available lower quality ores that would then become economical.

Current light water reactors make relatively inefficient use of nuclear fuel, mostly fissioning only the very rare uranium-235 isotope. Nuclear reprocessing can make this waste reusable. Newer Generation III reactors also achieve a more efficient use of the available resources than the generation II reactors which make up the vast majority of reactors worldwide. With a pure fast reactor fuel cycle with a burn up of all the Uranium and actinides (which presently make up the most hazardous substances in nuclear waste), there is an estimated 160,000 years worth of Uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ore at the price of 60–100 US$/kg.

Breeding

As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is up to five billion years' worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants.

Breeder technology has been used in several reactors, but the high cost of reprocessing fuel safely, at 2006 technological levels, requires uranium prices of more than 200 USD/kg before becoming justified economically. Breeder reactors are however being pursued as they have the potential to burn up all of the actinides in the present inventory of nuclear waste while also producing power and creating additional quantities of fuel for more reactors via the breeding process.

As of 2017, there are only two breeder reactors producing commercial power: the BN-600 reactor and the BN-800 reactor, both in Russia. The BN-600, with a capacity of 600 MW, was built in 1980 in Beloyarsk and is planned to produce power until 2025. The BN-800 is an updated version of the BN-600, and started operation in 2016 with a net electrical capacity of 789 MW. The technical design of a yet larger breeder, the BN-1200 reactor was originally scheduled to be finalized in 2013, with construction slated for 2015 but has since been delayed.

The Phénix breeder reactor in France was powered down in 2009 after 36 years of operation. Japan's Monju breeder reactor restarted (having been shut down in 1995) in 2010 for 3 months, but shut down again after equipment fell into the reactor during reactor checkups and it is now planned to be decommissioned.

Both China and India are building breeder reactors. The Indian 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is in the commissioning phase, with plans to build five more by 2020. The China Experimental Fast Reactor began producing power in 2011.

Another alternative to fast breeders is thermal breeder reactors that use uranium-233 bred from thorium as fission fuel in the thorium fuel cycle. Thorium is about 3.5 times more common than uranium in the Earth's crust, and has different geographic characteristics. This would extend the total practical fissionable resource base by 450%. India's three-stage nuclear power programme features the use of a thorium fuel cycle in the third stage, as it has abundant thorium reserves but little uranium.

Nuclear waste

The most important waste stream from nuclear power plants is spent nuclear fuel. It is primarily composed of unconverted uranium as well as significant quantities of transuranic actinides (plutonium and curium, mostly). In addition, about 3% of it is fission products from nuclear reactions. The actinides (uranium, plutonium, and curium) are responsible for the bulk of the long-term radioactivity, whereas the fission products are responsible for the bulk of the short-term radioactivity.

High-level radioactive waste

High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive wastes remain deadly to living organisms. Of particular concern are two long-lived fission products, Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years), which dominate spent nuclear fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years). Consequently, high-level radioactive waste requires sophisticated treatment and management to successfully isolate it from the biosphere. This usually necessitates treatment, followed by a long-term management strategy involving permanent storage, disposal or transformation of the waste into a non-toxic form.

Governments around the world are considering a range of waste management and disposal options, usually involving deep-geologic placement, although there has been limited progress toward implementing long-term waste management solutions. This is partly because the timeframes in question when dealing with radioactive waste range from 10,000 to millions of years, according to studies based on the effect of estimated radiation doses.

Some proposed nuclear reactor designs however such as the American Integral Fast Reactor and the Molten salt reactor can use the nuclear waste from light water reactors as a fuel, transmutating it to isotopes that would be safe after hundreds, instead of tens of thousands of years. This offers a potentially more attractive alternative to deep geological disposal.

Another possibility is the use of thorium in a reactor especially designed for thorium (rather than mixing in thorium with uranium and plutonium (i.e. in existing reactors). Used thorium fuel remains only a few hundreds of years radioactive, instead of tens of thousands of years.

Since the fraction of a radioisotope's atoms decaying per unit of time is inversely proportional to its half-life, the relative radioactivity of a quantity of buried human radioactive waste would diminish over time compared to natural radioisotopes (such as the decay chains of 120 trillion tons of thorium and 40 trillion tons of uranium which are at relatively trace concentrations of parts per million each over the crust's 3 * 10 ton mass). For instance, over a timeframe of thousands of years, after the most active short half-life radioisotopes decayed, burying U.S. nuclear waste would increase the radioactivity in the top 2000 feet of rock and soil in the United States (10 million km) by ≈ 1 part in 10 million over the cumulative amount of natural radioisotopes in such a volume, although the vicinity of the site would have a far higher concentration of artificial radioisotopes underground than such an average.

Low-level radioactive waste

The nuclear industry also produces a large volume of low-level radioactive waste in the form of contaminated items like clothing, hand tools, water purifier resins, and (upon decommissioning) the materials of which the reactor itself is built. Low-level waste is generally stored on-site until radiation levels are low enough to be disposed as ordinary waste. Occasionally low-level waste can be sent to a low-level waste disposal site.

Waste relative to other types

In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes account for less than 1% of total industrial toxic wastes, much of which remains hazardous for long periods. Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material by volume than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and mildly radioactive material from the coal. A 2008 report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that coal power actually results in more radioactivity being released into the environment than nuclear power operation, and that the population effective dose equivalent, or dose to the public from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as from the operation of nuclear plants. Although coal ash is much less radioactive than spent nuclear fuel on a weight per weight basis, coal ash is produced in much higher quantities per unit of energy generated, and this is released directly into the environment as fly ash, whereas nuclear plants use shielding to protect the environment from radioactive materials, for example, in dry cask storage vessels.

Waste disposal

Disposal of nuclear waste is often said to be the among the most problematic aspects of the industry. Presently, waste is mainly stored at individual reactor sites and there are over 430 locations around the world where radioactive material continues to accumulate. Some experts suggest that centralized underground repositories which are well-managed, guarded, and monitored, would be a vast improvement. There is an "international consensus on the advisability of storing nuclear waste in deep geological repositories", with the lack of movement of nuclear waste in the 2 billion year old natural nuclear fission reactors in Oklo, Gabon being cited as "a source of essential information today."

There are no commercial scale purpose built underground repositories in operation. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico has been taking nuclear waste since 1999 from production reactors, but as the name suggests is a research and development facility. A radiation leak at WIPP in 2014 brought renewed attention to the need for R&D on disposal of radioactive waste and spent fuel.

Reprocessing

Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This produces a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%. Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done in Europe, Russia, Japan, and India. The full potential of reprocessing has not been achieved because it requires breeder reactors, which are not commercially available.

Nuclear reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level waste, but by itself does not reduce radioactivity or heat generation and therefore does not eliminate the need for a geological waste repository. Reprocessing has been politically controversial because of the potential to contribute to nuclear proliferation, the potential vulnerability to nuclear terrorism, the political challenges of repository siting (a problem that applies equally to direct disposal of spent fuel), and because of its high cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle. Several different methods for reprocessing been tried, but many have had safety and practicality problems which have led to their discontinuation.

In the United States, the Obama administration stepped back from President Bush's plans for commercial-scale reprocessing and reverted to a program focused on reprocessing-related scientific research. Reprocessing is not allowed in the U.S. In the United States, spent nuclear fuel is currently all treated as waste. A major recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was that "the United States should undertake an integrated nuclear waste management program that leads to the timely development of one or more permanent deep geological facilities for the safe disposal of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste".

Depleted uranium

Uranium enrichment produces large amounts of depleted uranium (DU), which consists of U-238 with most of the easily fissile U-235 isotope removed. U-238 is a tough metal with several commercial uses including aircraft production, radiation shielding, and armor, as it has a higher density than lead. Depleted uranium is also controversially used in munitions; DU penetrators (bullets or APFSDS tips) "self sharpen", due to uranium's tendency to fracture along shear bands.

Accidents, attacks and safety

Accidents

Some serious nuclear and radiation accidents have occurred. The severity of nuclear accidents is generally classified using the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The scale ranks anomalous events or accidents on a scale from 0 (a deviation from normal operation that pose no safety risk) to 7 (a major accident with widespread effects). There have been 3 accidents of level 5 or higher in the civilian nuclear power industry, two of which, the Chernobyl accident and the Fukushima accident, are ranked at level 7. The Chernobyl accident in 1986 caused approximately 50 deaths from direct and indirect effects, and many more serious injuries. The exact death toll due to indirect effects of the widespread radiation contamination is difficult to measure, and depends on the assumptions used. Some studies put the total death toll of the Chernobyl accident from indirect effects much higher, in the order of thousands of people. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident was caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The accident has not caused any radiation related deaths, but resulted in radioactive contamination of surrounding areas. The difficult Fukushima disaster cleanup will take 40 or more years, and is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 was a smaller scale accident, rated at INES level 5. There were no direct or indirect deaths caused by the accident.

Other less serious accidents are more common. Benjamin K. Sovacool has reported that worldwide there have been 99 accidents (defined as either resulting in loss of human life or more than $50,000 of property damage) at nuclear power plants. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and 57% (56 out of 99) of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the United States.

Military nuclear-powered submarine mishaps include the K-19 reactor accident (1961), the K-27 reactor accident (1968), and the K-431 reactor accident (1985). International research is continuing into safety improvements such as passively safe plants, and the possible future use of nuclear fusion.

According to Benjamin K. Sovacool, fission energy accidents ranked first among energy sources in terms of their total economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage attributed to energy accidents. Another analysis presented in the international journal Human and Ecological Risk Assessment found that coal, oil, Liquid petroleum gas and hydroelectric accidents (primarily due to the Banqiao dam burst) have resulted in greater economic impacts than nuclear power accidents.

Safety

In terms of lives lost per unit of energy generated, nuclear power has caused fewer accidental deaths per unit of energy generated than all other major sources of energy generation. Energy produced by coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydropower has caused more deaths per unit of energy generated due to air pollution and energy accidents. This is found when comparing the immediate deaths from other energy sources to both the immediate nuclear related deaths from accidents and also including the latent, or predicted, indirect cancer deaths from nuclear energy accidents. When the combined immediate and indirect fatalities from nuclear power and all fossil fuels are compared, including fatalities resulting from the mining of the necessary natural resources to power generation and to air pollution, the use of nuclear power has been calculated to have prevented about 1.8 million deaths between 1971 and 2009, by reducing the proportion of energy that would otherwise have been generated by fossil fuels, and is projected to continue to do so. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life.

Forced evacuation from a nuclear accident may lead to social isolation, anxiety, depression, psychosomatic medical problems, reckless behavior, even suicide. Such was the outcome of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. A comprehensive 2005 study concluded that "the mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date". Frank N. von Hippel, an American scientist, commented on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, saying that "fear of ionizing radiation could have long-term psychological effects on a large portion of the population in the contaminated areas". A 2015 report in Lancet explained that serious impacts of nuclear accidents were often not directly attributable to radiation exposure, but rather social and psychological effects. Evacuation and long-term displacement of affected populations created problems for many people, especially the elderly and hospital patients. As of 2013, about 160,000 evacuees still live in temporary housing due to the evacuation order following the Fukushima accident.

Attacks and sabotage

Terrorists could target nuclear power plants in an attempt to release radioactive contamination into the community. The United States 9/11 Commission has said that nuclear power plants were potential targets originally considered for the September 11, 2001 attacks. An attack on a reactor’s spent fuel pool could also be serious, as these pools are less protected than the reactor core. The release of radioactivity could lead to thousands of near-term deaths and greater numbers of long-term fatalities.

If nuclear power use is to expand significantly, nuclear facilities will have to be made extremely safe from attacks that could release massive quantities of radioactivity. New reactor designs have features of passive safety, such as the flooding of the reactor core without active intervention by reactor operators. However, these safety measures have generally been developed and studied with respect to accidents, not to the deliberate reactor attack by a terrorist group. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does now also require new reactor license applications to consider security during the design stage. In the United States, the NRC carries out "Force on Force" (FOF) exercises at all Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) sites at least once every three years. In the United States, plants are surrounded by a double row of tall fences which are electronically monitored. The plant grounds are patrolled by a sizeable force of armed guards.

Insider sabotage is also a threat because insiders can observe and work around security measures. Successful insider crimes depended on the perpetrators' observation and knowledge of security vulnerabilities. A fire caused 5–10 million dollars worth of damage to New York's Indian Point Energy Center in 1971. The arsonist turned out to be a plant maintenance worker. Sabotage by workers has been reported at many other reactors in the United States: at Zion Nuclear Power Station (1974), Quad Cities Nuclear Generating Station, Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station, Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, Trojan Nuclear Power Plant (1974), Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant (1980), and Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station (1981). Many reactors overseas have also reported sabotage by workers.

Nuclear proliferation

Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can be used to make nuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so. When this happens a nuclear power program can become a route leading to a nuclear weapon or a public annex to a "secret" weapons program. The concern over Iran's nuclear activities is a case in point.

As of April 2012 there were thirty one countries that have civil nuclear power plants, of which nine have nuclear weapons, with the vast majority of these nuclear weapons states having first produced weapons, before commercial fission electricity stations. Moreover, the re-purposing of civilian nuclear industries for military purposes would be a breach of the Non-proliferation treaty, of which 190 countries adhere to.

A fundamental goal for global security is to minimize the nuclear proliferation risks associated with the expansion of nuclear power. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is an international effort to create a distribution network in which developing countries in need of energy would receive nuclear fuel at a discounted rate, in exchange for that nation agreeing to forgo their own indigenous develop of a uranium enrichment program. The France-based Eurodif/European Gaseous Diffusion Uranium Enrichment Consortium is a program that successfully implemented this concept, with Spain and other countries without enrichment facilities buying a share of the fuel produced at the French controlled enrichment facility, but without a transfer of technology. Iran was an early participant from 1974, and remains a shareholder of Eurodif via Sofidif.

According to Benjamin K. Sovacool, a "number of high-ranking officials, even within the United Nations, have argued that they can do little to stop states using nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons". A 2009 United Nations report said that:

the revival of interest in nuclear power could result in the worldwide dissemination of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies, which present obvious risks of proliferation as these technologies can produce fissile materials that are directly usable in nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, power reactors can also reduce nuclear weapons arsenals when military grade nuclear materials are reprocessed to be used as fuel in nuclear power plants. The Megatons to Megawatts Program, the brainchild of Thomas Neff of MIT, is the single most successful non-proliferation program to date. Up to 2005, the Megatons to Megawatts Program had processed $8 billion of high enriched, weapons grade uranium into low enriched uranium suitable as nuclear fuel for commercial fission reactors by diluting it with natural uranium. This corresponds to the elimination of 10,000 nuclear weapons. For approximately two decades, this material generated nearly 10 percent of all the electricity consumed in the United States (about half of all U.S. nuclear electricity generated) with a total of around 7 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity produced. Enough energy to energize the entire United States electric grid for about two years. In total it is estimated to have cost $17 billion, a "bargain for US ratepayers", with Russia profiting $12 billion from the deal. Much needed profit for the Russian nuclear oversight industry, which after the collapse of the Soviet economy, had difficulties paying for the maintenance and security of the Russian Federations highly enriched uranium and warheads.

The Megatons to Megawatts Program was hailed as a major success by anti-nuclear weapon advocates as it has largely been the driving force behind the sharp reduction in the quantity of nuclear weapons worldwide since the cold war ended. However without an increase in nuclear reactors and greater demand for fissile fuel, the cost of dismantling and down blending has dissuaded Russia from continuing their disarmament. As of 2013 Russia appears to not be interested in extending the program.

Environmental impact

Carbon emissions

Nuclear power is one of the leading low carbon power generation methods of producing electricity, and in terms of total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated, has emission values comparable to or lower than renewable energy. A 2014 analysis of the carbon footprint literature by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the embodied total life-cycle emission intensity of fission electricity has a median value of 12 g CO₂eq/kWh which is the lowest out of all commercial baseload energy sources. This is contrasted with coal and fossil gas at 820 and 490 g CO₂ eq/kWh. From the beginning of fission-electric power station commercialization in the 1970s, nuclear power prevented the emission of about 64 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that would have otherwise resulted from the burning of fossil fuels in thermal power stations.

Radiation

According to the United Nations (UNSCEAR), regular nuclear power plant operation including the nuclear fuel cycle causes radioisotope releases into the environment amounting to 0.0002 millisieverts (mSv) per year of public exposure as a global average. This is small compared to variation in natural background radiation, which averages 2.4 mSv/a globally but frequently varies between 1 mSv/a and 13 mSv/a depending on a person's location as determined by UNSCEAR. As of a 2008 report, the remaining legacy of the worst nuclear power plant accident (Chernobyl) is 0.002 mSv/a in global average exposure (a figure which was 0.04 mSv per person averaged over the entire populace of the Northern Hemisphere in the year of the accident in 1986, although far higher among the most affected local populations and recovery workers).

Waste heat

Climate change causing weather extremes such as heat waves, reduced precipitation levels and droughts can have a significant impact on all thermal power station infrastructure, including large biomass-electric and fission-electric stations alike, if cooling in these power stations, namely in the steam condenser is provided by certain freshwater sources. While many thermal stations use indirect seawater cooling or cooling towers that in comparison use little to no freshwater, those that were designed to heat exchange with rivers and lakes, can run into economic problems.

This presently infrequent generic problem may become increasingly significant over time. This can force nuclear reactors to be shut down, as happened in France during the 2003 and 2006 heat waves. Nuclear power supply was severely diminished by low river flow rates and droughts, which meant rivers had reached the maximum temperatures for cooling reactors. During the heat waves, 17 reactors had to limit output or shut down. 77% of French electricity is produced by nuclear power and in 2009 a similar situation created a 8GW shortage and forced the French government to import electricity. Other cases have been reported from Germany, where extreme temperatures have reduced nuclear power production only 9 times due to high temperatures between 1979 and 2007.

If global warming continues, this disruption is likely to increase or alternatively, station operators could instead retro-fit other means of cooling, like cooling towers, despite these frequently being large structures and therefore sometimes unpopular with the public.

Comparison with renewable energy

There is an ongoing debate on the relative benefits of nuclear power compared to renewable energy sources for the generation of low-carbon electricity. Proponents of renewable energy argue that wind power and solar power are already cheaper and safer than nuclear power. Nuclear power proponents argue that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar do not offer the scalability necessary for a large scale decarbonization of the electric grid, mainly due to their intermittency. Although the majority of installed renewable energy across the world is currently in the form of hydro power, solar and wind power are growing at a much higher pace, especially in developed countries.

Several studies report that it is in principle possible to cover most of energy generation with renewable sources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that if governments were supportive, and the full complement of renewable energy technologies were deployed, renewable energy supply could account for almost 80% of the world's energy use within forty years. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said the necessary investment in renewables would cost only about 1% of global GDP annually. This approach could contain greenhouse gas levels to less than 450 parts per million, the safe level beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

However, other studies suggest that solar and wind energy are not cost-effective compared to nuclear power. The Brookings Institution published The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies in 2014 which states, after performing an energy and emissions cost analysis, that "The net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants", with the most cost effective low carbon power technology being determined to be nuclear power.

Nuclear power is also proposed as a tested and practical way to implement a low-carbon energy infrastructure, as opposed to renewable sources. Analysis in 2015 by Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability Barry W. Brook and his colleagues on the topic of replacing fossil fuels entirely, from the electric grid of the world, has determined that at the historically modest and proven-rate at which nuclear energy was added to and replaced fossil fuels in France and Sweden during each nation's building programs in the 1980s, nuclear energy could displace or remove fossil fuels from the electric grid completely within 10 years, "allow the world to meet the most stringent greenhouse-gas mitigation targets.". In a similar analysis, Brook had earlier determined that 50% of all global energy, that is not solely electricity, but transportation synfuels etc. could be generated within approximately 30 years, if the global nuclear fission build rate was identical to each of these nation's already proven installation rates in units of installed nameplate capacity, GW per year, per unit of global GDP (GW/year/$). This is in contrast to the conceptual studies for a 100% renewable energy world, which would require an orders of magnitude more costly global investment per year, which has no historical precedent, along with far greater land that would have to be devoted to the wind, wave and solar projects, and the inherent assumption that humanity will use less, and not more, energy in the future. As Brook notes, the "principal limitations on nuclear fission are not technical, economic or fuel-related, but are instead linked to complex issues of societal acceptance, fiscal and political inertia, and inadequate critical evaluation of the real-world constraints facing low-carbon alternatives."

Several studies conclude that wind and solar power have costs that are comparable or lower than nuclear power, when considering price per kWh. The cost of constructing established nuclear power reactor designs has followed an increasing trend due to regulations and court cases whereas the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is declining for wind and solar power. In 2010 a report from Solar researchers at Duke University found that solar power may be already cheaper than new nuclear power plants. However they state that if subsidies were removed for solar power, the crossover point would be delayed by years. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2011 estimated that in 2016, solar will have a levelized cost of electricity almost twice as expensive as nuclear (21¢/kWh for solar, 11.39¢/kWh for nuclear), and wind somewhat less expensive than nuclear (9.7¢/kWh). However, the EIA has also cautioned that levelized costs of intermittent sources such as wind and solar are not directly comparable to costs of "dispatchable" sources (those that can be adjusted to meet demand), as intermittent sources need costly large-scale back-up power supplies for when the weather changes.

A 2010 study by the Global Subsidies Initiative compared global relative energy subsidies, or government financial aid for the deployment of different energy sources. Results show that fossil fuels receive about 1 U.S. cents per kWh of energy they produce, nuclear energy receives 1.7 cents / kWh, renewable energy (excluding hydroelectricity) receives 5.0 cents / kWh and biofuels receive 5.1 cents / kWh in subsidies.

Nuclear power is comparable to, and in some cases lower, than many renewable energy sources in terms of lives lost per unit of electricity delivered. However, as opposed to renewable energy, conventional designs for nuclear reactors produce intensely radioactive spent fuel that needs to be stored or reprocessed. A nuclear plant also needs to be disassembled and removed and much of the disassembled nuclear plant needs to be stored as low level nuclear waste for a few decades.

Nuclear decommissioning

The financial costs of every nuclear power plant continues for some time after the facility has finished generating its last useful electricity. Once no longer economically viable, nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities are generally decommissioned, returning the facility and its parts to a safe enough level to be entrusted for other uses, such as greenfield status. After a cooling-off period that may last decades, reactor core materials are dismantled and cut into small pieces to be packed in containers for interim storage or transmutation experiments. The consensus on how to approach the task is one that is relatively inexpensive, but it has the potential to be hazardous to the natural environment as it presents opportunities for human error, accidents or sabotage.

In the United States a Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund is legally required, with utilities banking 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh during operations to fund future decommissioning. They must report regularly to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on the status of their decommissioning funds. About 70% of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all U.S. nuclear power reactors has already been collected (on the basis of the average cost of $320 million per reactor-steam turbine unit).

In the United States in 2011, there are 13 reactors that had permanently shut down and are in some phase of decommissioning. With Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant and Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station having completed the process in 2006–2007, after ceasing commercial electricity production circa 1992. The majority of the 15 years, was used to allow the station to naturally cool-down on its own, which makes the manual disassembly process both safer and cheaper. Decommissioning at nuclear sites which have experienced a serious accident are the most expensive and time-consuming.

Nuclear power works under an insurance framework that limits or structures accident liabilities in accordance with the Paris convention on nuclear third-party liability, the Brussels supplementary convention, the Vienna convention on civil liability for nuclear damage and the Price-Anderson Act in the United States. It is often argued that this potential shortfall in liability represents an external cost not included in the cost of nuclear electricity; but the cost is small, amounting to about 0.1% of the levelized cost of electricity, according to a CBO study. These beyond-regular-insurance costs for worst-case scenarios are not unique to nuclear power, as hydroelectric power plants are similarly not fully insured against a catastrophic event such as the Banqiao Dam disaster, where 11 million people lost their homes and from 30,000 to 200,000 people died, or large dam failures in general. As private insurers base dam insurance premiums on limited scenarios, major disaster insurance in this sector is likewise provided by the state.

Debate on nuclear power

The nuclear power debate concerns the controversy which has surrounded the deployment and use of nuclear fission reactors to generate electricity from nuclear fuel for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies", in some countries.

Proponents of nuclear energy contend that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions and increases energy security by decreasing dependence on imported energy sources. Proponents claim that nuclear power produces virtually no conventional air pollution, such as greenhouse gases and smog, in contrast to the main alternative of fossil-fuel power stations. Nuclear power can produce base-load power unlike many renewables which are intermittent energy sources lacking large-scale and cheap ways of storing energy. M. King Hubbert saw oil as a resource that would run out, and proposed nuclear energy as a replacement energy source. Proponents claim that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.

Opponents believe that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment. These threats include the problems of processing, transport and storage of radioactive nuclear waste, the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and terrorism, as well as health risks and environmental damage from uranium mining. They also contend that reactors themselves are enormously complex machines where many things can and do go wrong; and there have been serious nuclear accidents. Critics do not believe that the risks of using nuclear fission as a power source can be fully offset through the development of new technology. In years past, they also argued that when all the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered, from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning, nuclear power is neither a low-carbon nor an economical electricity source.

Arguments of economics and safety are used by both sides of the debate.

Use in space

Both fission and fusion appear promising for space propulsion applications, generating higher mission velocities with less reaction mass. This is due to the much higher energy density of nuclear reactions: some 7 orders of magnitude (10,000,000 times) more energetic than the chemical reactions which power the current generation of rockets.

Radioactive decay has been used on a relatively small scale (few kW), mostly to power space missions and experiments by using radioisotope thermoelectric generators such as those developed at Idaho National Laboratory.

Research

Advanced fission reactor designs

Current fission reactors in operation around the world are second or third generation systems, with most of the first-generation systems having been already retired. Research into advanced generation IV reactor types was officially started by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) based on eight technology goals, including to improve nuclear safety, improve proliferation resistance, minimize waste, improve natural resource utilization, the ability to consume existing nuclear waste in the production of electricity, and decrease the cost to build and run such plants. Most of these reactors differ significantly from current operating light water reactors, and are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030.

One disadvantage of any new reactor technology is that safety risks may be greater initially as reactor operators have little experience with the new design. Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum has explained that almost all serious nuclear accidents have occurred with what was at the time the most recent technology. He argues that "the problem with new reactors and accidents is twofold: scenarios arise that are impossible to plan for in simulations; and humans make mistakes". As one director of a U.S. research laboratory put it, "fabrication, construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not".

Hybrid nuclear fusion-fission

Hybrid nuclear power is a proposed means of generating power by use of a combination of nuclear fusion and fission processes. The concept dates to the 1950s, and was briefly advocated by Hans Bethe during the 1970s, but largely remained unexplored until a revival of interest in 2009, due to delays in the realization of pure fusion. When a sustained nuclear fusion power plant is built, it has the potential to be capable of extracting all the fission energy that remains in spent fission fuel, reducing the volume of nuclear waste by orders of magnitude, and more importantly, eliminating all actinides present in the spent fuel, substances which cause security concerns.

Nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion reactions have the potential to be safer and generate less radioactive waste than fission. These reactions appear potentially viable, though technically quite difficult and have yet to be created on a scale that could be used in a functional power plant. Fusion power has been under theoretical and experimental investigation since the 1950s.

Several experimental nuclear fusion reactors and facilities exist. The largest and most ambitious international nuclear fusion project currently in progress is ITER, a large tokamak under construction in France. ITER is planned to pave the way for commercial fusion power by demonstrating self-sustained nuclear fusion reactions with positive energy gain. Construction of the ITER facility began in 2007, but the project has run into many delays and budget overruns. The facility is now not expected to begin operations until the year 2027 – 11 years after initially anticipated. A follow on commercial nuclear fusion power station, DEMO, has been proposed. There are also suggestions for a power plant based upon a different fusion approach, that of an inertial fusion power plant.

Fusion powered electricity generation was initially believed to be readily achievable, as fission-electric power had been. However, the extreme requirements for continuous reactions and plasma containment led to projections being extended by several decades. In 2010, more than 60 years after the first attempts, commercial power production was still believed to be unlikely before 2050.

See also

• List of nuclear power stations
• List of nuclear reactors
• Nuclear power by country
• Nuclear weapons debate
• Thorium-based nuclear power
• Uranium mining debate
• World energy consumption

References

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Further reading

• Armstrong, Robert C., Catherine Wolfram, Robert Gross, Nathan S. Lewis, and M.V. Ramana et al. The Frontiers of Energy, Nature Energy, Vol 1, 11 January 2016.
• Clarfield, Gerald H. and William M. Wiecek (1984). Nuclear America: Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States 1940–1980, Harper & Row.
• Cooke, Stephanie (2009). In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, Black Inc.
• Cravens, Gwyneth (2007). Power to Save the World: the Truth about Nuclear Energy. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26656-9.
• Elliott, David (2007). Nuclear or Not? Does Nuclear Power Have a Place in a Sustainable Energy Future?, Palgrave.
• Ferguson, Charles D., (2007). Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks Council on Foreign Relations.
• Garwin, Richard L. and Charpak, Georges (2001) Megawatts and Megatons A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age?, Knopf.
• Herbst, Alan M. and George W. Hopley (2007). Nuclear Energy Now: Why the Time has come for the World's Most Misunderstood Energy Source, Wiley.
• Schneider, Mycle, Steve Thomas, Antony Froggatt, Doug Koplow (2016). The World Nuclear Industry Status Report: World Nuclear Industry Status as of 1 January 2016.
• Walker, J. Samuel (1992). Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1993-1971, Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Weart, Spencer R. The Rise of Nuclear Fear. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. ISBN 0-674-05233-1

External links

• Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues — Annotated Bibliography on Nuclear Power – a partnership between the National Science Foundation, National Science Digital Library, Washington and Lee University, and Nuclear Pathways
• Energy Information Administration provides statistics and information
• The World Nuclear Industry Status Reports website by Mycle Schneider and others
• Nuclear Fuel Cycle Cost Calculator

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