Multi-regional transitional strategies towards fast reactor based nuclear energy systems

Full text: Sustainable nuclear energy systems are based on synergistic combinations of nuclear power plant (NPP) types with fast reactors (FRs) as a necessary component to address sustainability from a fissile resource and from a waste management perspective. Though, the path forward to such sustainable nuclear energy systems is not yet clear, given impediments that need to be addressed including possible economics and socio-political concerns (e.g. proliferation risk). These impediments are regionally dependent given the differences among today's and future's nuclear energy systems in various parts of the world. That is, differences in spent fuel inventories, nuclear fuel cycle facility deployment rates, NPP-park composition and energy market organization with also differing socio-political support for nuclear energy. An eight region representation of the world has been analysed using the nuclear fuel cycle dynamic scenarios systems code DANESS. The representation involves a variety of nuclear energy system deployment paths per region with identification of fissile material exchange between regions which could facilitate achieving sustainability of the nuclear energy system at the world-level. Such regional representation allows for addressing the local competitiveness of nuclear energy which is crucial to achieving global energy sustainability via the nuclear fuel cycle. The paper addresses the flexibility offered by FRs with varying conversion ratios concluding on the essential role that FRs have to play in 'regulating' the worldwide nuclear fuel cycle and especially the fissile material balance in the world. Therefore, FRs inherently represents an option towards energy sustainability with the potential to rebalance the fissile material inventory in the world, both in time and in space, and thus allow for addressing socio-political concerns on proliferation of such materials. The results of multi-regional global deployment scenarios that explore transition to FR strategies are presented in this paper. (author)