R and D for new nuclear technologies to sustain the energy demand

The recent nuclear research issues need new technologies and continuous progress in finding different and efficient solutions to coping with a sustained economy and and upraising energy demand. The increasing trend in energy consumption and occurring of new and large consumers, especially from Asian countries, imposes finding of new means for clean, large scale and sustained energy production. The new technologies and scientific achievements, also the international cooperation, offer opportunities to mitigate the actual barriers in order to cumulate and use advanced energy production processes, for finding new energy sources and to build improved, reliable and safe power plants. The paper presents: - the state of the art in the level of current technologies for nuclear power plants; - the steps to be undertaken in order to solve the problems of large scale energy production; - the energy production current issues; - the key arguments in R and D development for finding new energy sources; - the limitations in industrial processes knowledge and use. Advanced R and D in the field of intelligent SSCs used for new generation of reactors is a specific point of the paper. (authors)