Sharply rising energy prices, and the California electricity shortage, have placed nuclear energy back in the American consciousness.

The opportunity for nuclear energy to play a larger role in meeting the growing world needs for abundant, affordable, and clean energy are being addressed in the international Generation IV advanced reactor development program. The future challenges for nuclear energy are primarily the need to remain economically competitive (and to substantially reduce initial capital costs), to meet public expectations for continuous improvement in safety, to deal with nuclear wastes in a socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable way, and to assure that commercial nuclear energy cannot pose a future threat to proliferation of nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes.

Two technology options, the high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (represented by the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor), and the liquid-metal-cooled fast reactor with a "closed" fuel cycle, represent exciting directions for future nuclear energy. The PBMR gas-cooled reactor offers considerable promise as a small, modular plant that could be factory fabricated and field deployed at considerably lower cost than current power reactors. The safety characteristics of the PBMR include robust, high temperature core materials that cannot melt during an accident. The very high temperature helium coolant opens opportunities for process heat applications such as hydrogen production. The liquid-metal-cooled fast reactor is highly fuel efficient and holds the key to a truly sustainable nuclear fuel cycle that can have a major long-term benefit to the requirements for nuclear waste disposal.

This page updated August 13, 2001