A nuclear powered world

At Global, the GNEP discussions were very detailed. Presentations were made on a variety of proliferation, accident and terrorism resistant reactor types suitable for turnkey delivery. These included three very small-scale designs - 50MW to 120MW - intended for aggregated-over-time hook-up to low grade electricity grids, and also for remote locations and/or safe, unattended operation. At least one of these designs will be small enough to be delivered - fully fueled - as an integrated unit, and removed the same way - years hence, when the fuel runs out.

The International Atomic Energy Agency delivered a draft report on its endeavours to find out what prospective nuclear power recipient countries actually wanted - as opposed to what the nuclear suppliers had in mind to deliver: they mostly wanted larger, centralised units. (The IAEA identified about 50 prospective recipients, and conducted in-depth research with eight “most likely” candidates for early uptake - the formal report is to be published in early 2008.) Simultaneously, other specialist groups delved into enhanced nuclear safeguards monitoring.

Security will perhaps be GNEP's Achilles heel: from three perspectives. First, it is not at all clear that a multiplicity (the developers' projected aggregate demand runs to hundreds of units) of dispersed small-scale reactors can be as economically protected as a single, larger power station.

Second, the US formal position - as reiterated in its presentation at Global - is that supplier countries would do their part towards non-proliferation by reprocessing plutonium only together with other in-reactor created transuranics: neptunium, americium, and so on. In this way, the “conventional” Generation III/III+ designs used to kick start GNEP could benefit from enhanced fuel utilisation, without nuclear suppliers expanding transient stocks of separated plutonium. (The constant caveat about the general unsuitability of power reactor produced plutonium - which includes some non-fissile Pu240, whereas a weapon requires high purity Pu239 - is too arcane a topic for elucidation here.) But Japan and France (plus also Russia and China) reprocess plutonium already.

Presumably recognising this, and regarding a US stand-alone policy as futile, at Global it was informally allowed that US policy was in process of being changed to adopt plutonium separation. (Since the presidency of Jimmy Carter - a former US navy nuclear engineer - the US has independently refrained from the reprocessing of plutonium from Generation II spent fuel, on the grounds of enhancing non-proliferation. US reversal of this policy is a very big step.)

Third, and perhaps most important from a developing-country perspective, energy security is inextricably tied to industrial progress, and full nuclear fuel cycle competence - which requires cadres of highly trained specialists across disparate, yet interlocking, disciplines - is equally seen as linked to the buildup of intellectual capital necessary to drive that progress.

“South Africa won't sign on to GNEP”, ran the Reuters newsflash - also emanating from Vienna, a mere two days after the positive Sunday pronouncement. Again, Global attendees were treated to a detailed country report. South Africa, having under its previous regime voluntarily admitted to and dismantled its former successful nuclear weapons program, is now determined to reap the benefit of its expensively-nurtured nuclear expertise in a legitimate way. It has independently matured a variant of one of the most promising Generation III+ types: the Pebble Bed Reactor, and identified the commercialisation of this design as a national strategic program. South Africa intends to be optionally self-sufficient in the nuclear fuel cycle, to deliver 30 per cent of its electricity from nuclear by 2030 (the present figure is 6 per cent), and to enter the nuclear marketplace as a reactor supplier.

The inferred message is clear: South Africa will not be autocratically relegated to second-class nuclear - and, by implication, industrial - status. It is extremely plausible that other former weapons developers - Brazil, for instance - as well as present-day nuclear novice nations will similarly see GNEP, not as an energy facilitator, but as an imposed retardation of their industrial growth. And as their economies mature, it might be expected that even some initially willing GNEP recipients will naturally, having emulated South Korea's recent blistering economic progress, chafe against nuclear constraints which they consider no longer reasonable, appropriate or acceptable.

Yet - disparaging whispers (and shouts) about US grasping for retrieved nuclear power hegemony aside - GNEP's essential purpose is benign: without early, broadscale adoption of nuclear power, unremitting world energy demand will make a mockery of greenhouse amelioration. The crucial question therefore becomes: can GNEP work as a 21st century stopgap, and can a post Generation IV reactor class be implemented in such a way that, eventually, no nation requires either uranium enrichment or ex-reactor spent fuel reprocessing? That is, can nuclear plant reach a stage of sophistication where natural fuel is fed in, and fissile-free waste comes out?

Of the six Generation IV technologies preselected in 2002 (and reaffirmed in 2006) by the Generation IV International Consortium, only one - the Molten Salt Reactor - has this potential. Much derided and mocked because it was originally, indeed during the 1950s and 60s, developed for aircraft propulsion, the MSR dissolves its fuel in a liquid salt solution which also acts as the reactor coolant. The potential of this liquid fuel design type is for continuous in-reactor recycling and burning of actinides, and for continuous waste extraction. MSR, though further along its development path than other Generation IV types, is not well funded under the Generation IV Roadmap, and received scant attention at Global 2007. MSR, perhaps eventually conceived in conjunction with an accelerator-driven neutron source to maintain criticality, might really be considered a “Generation V/V+” technology.

It is towards this nominally “Generation V+” end-point, well beyond the majority focus even of Global 2007, that nuclear fission technology must strive if GNEP's altruistic goal of a proliferation-free nuclear powered world is to be fully realised.