The increasing of terror menace in recent years led the international community to enhance the efforts to minimize threats to people in everyday life by developing devices, techniques, and procedures targeted to improve the collective security. In this framework the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) developed a new device to improve CBRNe resilience, the Neutron Active Interrogation system (NAI). It has been conceived and optimized to identify transuranic-based Radioactive Dispersal Devices potentially hidden in packages, envisaging its utilization in field applications. NAI is based on the detection of neutrons from induced fission on small amount, of the order of a few grams, of fissile material. The device exploits a portable neutron generator based on d-t fusion reaction, a polyethylene structure for reducing the neutron energy in order to maximize the fission cross-section, and an array of 3 He proportional counters. Fissile material detection is made using the Differential Die-Away time Analysis (DDAA), an active neutron technique based on the difference among the die-away times of fast interrogation neutrons and prompt fission neutrons induced by thermal neutrons in the moderating system. The original experimental setup was tested on the field during the live demo open to the public at the EDEN Project Demonstration occurred in September 2015 at ENEA Frascati Research Centre in Rome. Since then, the setup has been modified to improve the device detection capabilities. NAI performances have been tested within different environmental conditions, e.g. open field geometry vs. bunker-like geometry, to study the effects of scattering phenomena. The optimized configuration here presented is transportable, lightweight, and able to detect 2 grams of 235 U contained in a salt of depleted uranium in real time, independently from the measurement environmental conditions.

The management of long-lived radionuclides in spent fuel is a key issue to achieve the closed nuclear fuel cycle and the sustainable development of nuclear energy. Partitioning-Transmutation is supposed to treat efficiently the long-lived radionuclides. Accordingly, the study of transmutation for long-lived Minor Actinides (MAs) is a significant work for the post-processing of spent fuel. In the present work, the transmutations in Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Mixed OXide (MOX) fuel are investigated through the Monte Carlo based code RMC. Two kinds of MAs are incorporated homogeneously into two initial concentrations MOX fuel assembly. The results indicate an overall nice efficiency of transmutation in both initial MOX concentrations, especially for two MAs primarily generated in the UOX fuel, 237 Np and 241 Am. In addition, the inclusion of 237 Np has no large influence on other MAs, while the transmutation efficiency of 237 Np is excellent. The transmutation of MAs in MOX fuel depletion is expected to be an efficient nuclear spent fuel management method.

In order to meet the sustainable development demand for energy, developing nuclear power actively has become an important means for the country to improve energy supply pattern and change the energy structure. The normal operation of the nuclear power station brings enormous economic and social benefits, but also accompanied by airborne radioactive effluent and liquid radioactive effluent discharge. In order to estimate the effect of radioactive effluent release during the normal operation of nuclear power plant on radiation dose of the environment and the public, in this article, domain knowledge analysis and domain knowledge modeling will be carried out on the theoretical model of evaluation calculation. Then, combined with actual business logic, advanced software development techniques and mature design ideas will be adopted to realize the field component of radiation dose evaluation in nuclear power plant. Establish the corresponding domain component library, and thus to achieve the building of radiation dose evaluation software system. The main content of this paper will be divided into two parts to elaborate, First part is the domain knowledge analysis and modeling of radiation dose evaluation model of nuclear power plant radiation environment, the other part is based on radiation dose evaluation component library software system researching, designing and achieving. In the domain knowledge analysis of the radiation dose estimation model, due to the mutual independence of the airborne radioactive effluent and the liquid radioactive effluent in the evaluation mode, this paper will analyze and model the domain knowledge separately. The airborne radioactive effluent is divided into four parts: air immersion external exposure, ground deposition external irradiation, ingestion inhalation and inhalation in air. The main contents of the analysis include atmospheric diffusion suitable for environmental characteristics of nuclear power plant site, ground deposition factors, food chain data, and lifestyle habits around the site. In the field of knowledge analysis of liquid radioactive effluent, there are four ways: external marine activity irradiation, coastal deposit sediment irradiation, and irradiation of seafood. The analysis mainly includes dilution and diffusion conditions in the surrounding sea area of nuclear power plant, the radionuclide in the seawater of the receiving water body, the shore sedimentation factor and the transfer model of the radionuclide in the seafood. Based on the detailed analysis and research on the radiation dose evaluation of nuclear power plant, and the designing of the domain model by adopting mature software design idea and the advanced software development technology, the domain component of the radiation dose evaluation field is realized, and build the corresponding domain component library. This can provide a reliable and usable domain component library for the radiation dose evaluation of each nuclear power plant, improve the maintainability of the radiation dose evaluation system of the nuclear power plant, the comprehensibility of business logic, and the reusability of the evaluate module, so as to meet the calculation demands on radiation dose effects of public caused by radionuclide release in normal operation of the nuclear power plant.

Nuclear safety law and regulation related to the field of public acceptance and nuclear education of nuclear power (NP) is in blank, which seriously restricts the sustainable development of nuclear energy. In order to make up for nuclear safety legal system in the field of public acceptance of nulcear power plant (NPP) and education of NP and related fields, this paper provides data and gives some advice. The investigation used a random sample survey method to made a field survey of 301 people living near inland NPP. In this survey, 55.48% of people are concerned about NPPs development in their daily life, 73.09% of people support the development of NPPs, 63.79% of people are against NPPs built in the vicinity of their own, 30.90% of people think that NPPs is safe, 76.08% of people worry about the harmful impact on the surrounding residents, 81.06% of people know and learn the knowledge of NP by television and internet, 19.93% of people know the related knowledge of NP by government propaganda. In conclusion, most of people support and pay attention to the development of inland NPP, but they do not have a deep understanding of nuclear safety so they do not fully accept the inland NPP. It is suggested that we should increase information publicity of public network, promote popular science propaganda about NPP by government, improve nuclear safety laws and regulations, and strengthen the study on the psychological mechanism of public NP. If we can do all of this, it will help to improve the development of inland NPP Using the internet and television popularizes the NPP Invite officials from the site of the new NPP station and the relevant people in the surrounding regions to visit the NPP which has been built and participate in nuclear safety related knowledge training. Speeding up the process of “nuclear safety” law and perfecting the laws and regulations for protecting the safety and rights of public.

At present, there are hundreds of nuclear power plants in operation around the world. Anti-nuclear movements continue in many places, although the nuclear power plants have good operating records. It has some factors, and the first factor that the public knows little about nuclear industry, results in regarding the nuclear power plant mysterious. This condition relates to destructive scene by nuclear weapon with nuclear industry, deeming it unacceptable to take this risk. Secondly, construction of nuclear power plant and off site emergency may occupy large land. The public hopes to be rewarded more to offset the risk by their imagination. Last, it relates to the political environment of one country. Every country has its own situation, so the strategies of developing nuclear power plant are widely different. The public is not familiar with other nuclear engineering projects except nuclear power plants, and hence the boycott happens more frequently. Sino-French cooperation on nuclear fuel cycle project is the first large-scale commercial spent fuel reprocessing plant, which is the biggest cooperative project between China and France until now. AREVA is responsible for technology, and CNNC is responsible for building. Spent fuel reprocessing is the most important part of nuclear fuel cycle back end, which separates uranium and plutonium from spent fuel, and manufactures MOX fuel with recycled resources for using in nuclear reactor again. This will make the best use of the uranium resources. After that process, the fission products needed to be disposed reduce significantly. And it is good for environmental protection. The public protest happened in one of the candidate sites, when CNNC carried out the preliminary work of site selection. For meeting the enormous energy demands, the fossil energy may be exhausted in the future due to the greenhouse gases emission. Chinese government speeds up the development of new energy. Nuclear energy is the only technology with no emission of greenhouse gases and will be rapidly developed. Along with the nuclear power units continuing to increase, they become the critical factors in restricting the sustainable development of nuclear energy. That is efficient utilization of uranium resources, spent fuel intermediate storage, reprocessing, and geologic disposal of high level radioactive waste. To this project, it not only has a great current demand, but also closely relates to transition of energy structure. The public has different views in the project progressing, which results in wide concern and discussion. The article took this event for example, and analyzed the reason from all directions. Besides, the author put forward own views for the public acceptance events about nuclear engineering projects except nuclear power plant.

To manage climate challenge and optimize energy supply structure, China has decided to develop more nuclear power in a safe and high-efficiency manner. On a nuclear sustainable development perspective, it is necessary to develop a closed fuel cycle (CFC) system and also take great efforts to improve natural uranium (NU) utilization ratio of thermal reactor. CANDU is great certainty to play an important role in this strategy. This paper presents CNNC Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company Limited (TQNPC) efforts of being develop the engineering technologies of recycling reprocessed uranium (RU) and nuclear use of thorium (Th) resource in CANDU type reactor and finding the CANDU’s position in Chinese CFC system. Also this paper provides a proposal of implementation plan for Chinese CFC system development and also for application of the related CANDU engineering technologies.

Nuclear safety attracts many concerns from society especially after Fukushima accident. In recent years, although nuclear safety system has been continuously improved on the aspects of design functions, safety standards and safety assessment methods, etc., the public panic has not been reduced correspondingly. In some countries and regions, the public nuclear panic has a strong impact on the sustainable development of nuclear energy, which has been widely recognized by nuclear industries worldwide. In this paper, we studied the nuclear public panic from three aspects with the analysis of psychological and sociological methods, including: (1) Discussing the source of nuclear panic in the sense of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and psychoanalysis; (2) Systemically studying the irrational behaviors in nuclear accidents and the public nuclear culture with cognitive theory; (3) Giving out the general model of public nuclear panic. In the last, some suggestions of nuclear risk perception and communication were also shown as reference, which are significant for the future work.

A large number of nuclear reactors with graphite as moderator and reflector material are facing to be decommissioned now or later, and the radioactive graphite waste is a large part of the involved wastes. In addition, high temperature gas-cooled reactors being developed rapidly use a large quantity of graphite material (up to 95%) in the nuclear fuel elements, besides graphite material as their moderator and reflector material in the reactor cores. Therefore, it is very critical to manage these graphite wastes from the decommissioned and being decommissioned reactors. The part with low-level radioactive contamination that could not be reused now, may be disposed of as solid waste to reduce its volume, and the possibility of its being retrieved and reused in the future with advanced technology should be considered. The other graphite waste with high-level radioactive contamination requires much more consideration. Due to several factors, such as its large quantity, a lack of available disposal sites and public acceptance, it may not be disposed of directly in the repository any more. An option may be the transformation of the high-level radioactive graphite waste into low-level radioactive waste through physical and chemical processes. The current technologies involve, e.g., thermal treatment to release 36 Cl, capture of the 14 C from the gases of incineration of carbon material and decomposition of carbon dioxide into solid carbon. After these treatments the carbon material might be decontaminated and separated as low-level radioactive waste and a small amount of residual high-level waste could be disposed of ultimately. In order to achieve a sustainable development of graphite material, the maximum utility and the minimal disposal of radioactive graphite should be considered in the management of radioactive graphite waste. It is urgent to explore new technologies for decontaminating and recycling radioactive graphite.

By proposing a credible response to the growing demand for energy while emitting no greenhouse gas, nuclear power will more than likely expand in the future, leading to increased quantities of used nuclear fuel to manage. Recycling the energy from this used fuel and an efficient waste management are key components for a sustainable development of nuclear energy. Current closed fuel cycle enables 25% in uranium savings, reduces the volume of waste by a factor 5 while its radiotoxicity is divided by a factor 10. Excellent track records of existing recycling plants participate to the competitiveness of MOX (Mixed Oxide) and ERU (Enriched Reprocessed Uranium) fuels compared to ENU (Enriched Natural Uranium) fuel. By offering a sound solution for nuclear waste management, recycling also contribute to favour nuclear acceptance. The advantages of closed fuel cycle have been demonstrated by the successful policy of recycling implemented in Europe for more than 30 years, with 35 reactors using MOX fuel with an excellent return of experience. The AREVA industrial recycling platform (La Hague and Melox plants) has treated more than 24,500 tons of used fuel and fabricated more than 1,600 tons of MOX fuel. With the new AREVA EPR™ reactor, recycling will take another step forward, enabling MOX fuel loading of up to 100%, thus offering optimized management options of recycled fuel, and giving more flexibility to its customers.

With the sustained and rapid development of the nuclear power plants, the spent fuel which is produced by the nuclear power plants will be rapidly rising. Spent fuel is High-level radioactive waste and should be disposed safely, which is important for the environment of land, public safety and health of the nuclear industry, the major issues of sustainable development and it is also necessary part for the nuclear industry activities. It is important to study and resolve the high-level radioactive waste repository problem. Spent nuclear fuel is an important component in the radioactive waste, The KBS-3 canister for geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Sweden consists of a ductile cast iron insert and a copper shielding. The ductile cast iron insert provides the mechanical strength whereas the copper protects the canister from corrosion. The canister inserts material were referred to as I24, I25 and I26, Spent nuclear fuel make the repository in high radiant intensity. The radiation analysis of canister insert is important in canister transport, the dose analysis of repository and groundwater radiolysis. Groundwater radiolysis, which produces oxidants (H 2 O 2 and O 2 ), will break the deep repository for spent nuclear fuel. The dose distribution of canister surface with different kinds of canister inserts (I24, I25 and I26) is calculated by MCNP (Ref. 1). Analysing the calculation results, we offer a reference for selecting canister inserts material.

Reprocessing of used nuclear fuel and treatment of nuclear waste are important issues for the sustainable development of nuclear energy. It is necessary to develop novel nuclear waste treatment technologies to meet the goal of minimizing the secondary liquid waste. Supercritical fluids are considered green solvents in chemical engineering process. It gains growing interest to treat nuclear waste using supercritical fluid extraction recently, because it can greatly decrease the secondary liquid waste with high radioactivity. During the past two decades, extraction of actinides and lanthanides by supercritical fluid has been intensively studied in some countries, and many important progresses have been made. However, the prospect of industrial application of supercritical fluid extraction technology in reprocessing of used nuclear fuel and treatment of nuclear waste is still unclear. In this paper, extraction of actinides and lanthanides from various matrixes or from their oxides by supercritical fluid including the experimental results, extraction mechanism and kinetic process was reviewed. The engineering demonstration projects were introduced. The trend of industrial application of supercritical fluid extraction technology in nuclear waste management was also discussed.

Nuclear power generation has become an increasingly attractive alternative in the global power market due to growing demand for electric power, increasing global competition for fossil fuels, concern over greenhouse gas emissions and their potential impact on climate change, and the desire for energy independence. Nuclear energy plays an integral role in providing carbon free energy for sustainable development of global electric power generation. Assuring the protection of people and the environmental is a prime consideration in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants. Potential environmental and safety concerns must be carefully evaluated and addressed. In order to assure that the nuclear power plant designs are sufficiently robust, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) requires that applicants for early site permits (ESP) and construction/operating licenses (COL) identify the most severe natural phenomena historically reported for the site and surrounding area to ensure sufficient design margin exists, considering the limited accuracy, quantity, and time in which the associated data has been collected. Because these permits are valid for a period up to 40 years, the potential impacts of climate change on the severity of natural phenomena, as it relates to the design basis and nuclear safety and environmental impacts are of increasing interest. Although no conclusive evidence or consensus of opinion is available on the long-term climatic changes resulting from human or natural causes, the USNRC has requested that climate change forecasts be considered for their potential affecting the most severe natural phenomena. The specific subject areas of concern include: • Extreme temperature and extreme precipitation (liquid & frozen) statistics – review 100 years of data around the site versus a review of the previous 30 years of data. • Extreme wind/basic wind speed – review previous 100 years of tropical cyclone data (including hurricanes) in the site vicinity versus previous 30 years of data. • Tornado – review of frequency and intensity trends and forecasts. • Drought – review of water availability / water supply during drought conditions and drought of record. • Stagnation Potential – review of conditions that would result in restrictive dispersion of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper examines the challenges and constraints in identifying and developing appropriate design- and operating-basis site/regional meteorological conditions while accounting for potential climate change during preparation of an ESP and/or COL. Because there is no regulatory guidance or quantitative acceptance criteria currently available, the methodology used to address climate change in a recent issued ESP will be discussed as an example.

Two aspects of the development trend of current nuclear fission technology are discussed. The first aspect is to improve economic competitiveness and safety for searching opportunity of enlarging the share of nuclear power. The second aspect is to explore new ways of improving the efficiency of nuclear fuel utilization and of reducing the geological repository volume of radioactive products from nuclear power generation. Sustainable development of Chinese economy in 21 st century will mainly rely on sustainable supply of clean energy with indigenous natural resources. The burden of current coal-dominant energy mix and the environmental pollution due to energy consumptions has led nuclear power to be an indispensable choice for further expanding electricity generation capacity and for reducing greenhouse effect gases emission in China. The long-term sustainable development strategy with nuclear fission technology beyond generation-IV for electric power generation, namely the fusion-fission hybrid subcritical reactor technology, is discussed. The impact of the proposed fission-fusion hybrid reactor to future nuclear power generation technology will reply on the success of the ITER-scale (500MW fusion power) Tokamak to burn plasma continuously in the predictable future. The main challenges and prospects of the strategy are also analyzed. The preliminary analysis has shown that the fission in the subcritical blanket driven by fusion neutrons can effectively amplify the energy carried by fusion neutron and maintain breeding of fissile material and tritium. It has been found from the results of a conceptual design that this new type of fusion-fission hybrid reactor may meet the requirement of China’s long-term sustainable development of nuclear energy.

The European HTR-Technology Network (HTR-TN), created in 2000, presently groups 20 organisations from European nuclear research and industry for developing the technologies of direct-cycle modular HTRs, which presently raise a large world-wide interest, because of their high potential for economic competitiveness, natural resource sparing, safety and minimisation of the waste impacts, in line with the goals of sustainable development of Generation IV. All aspects of HTR technologies are addressed by HTR-TN, from the reactor physics to the development of materials, fuel and components. Most of this activity is supported by the European Commission in the frame of its 5 th Euratom Framework Programme. The first results of HTR-TN programme are given: the analysis of the reactor physics international benchmark on the commissioning tests of HTTR (Japan), the long term behaviour of spent HTR fuel in geologic disposal conditions, the preparation of a very high burnup fuel irradiation and the development of fabrication processes for producing high performance coated particles, etc.

There are two categories of requirements: (i) user requirements that need to be met by the designers and manufacturers of innovative reactors and fuel cycles, and (ii) a wide spectrum of requirements that need to be met by countries, willing to successfully deploy innovative nuclear reactors for energy production. This part of the International Project on Innovative Reactors and Fuel Cycles will mainly deal with the second category of requirements. Both categories of requirements will vary depending on the institutional development, infrastructure availability and social attitude in any given country. Out of the need for sustainable development requirements will also more specific in the future. Over a 50-year time frame both categories of requirements will evolve with social and economic development as nuclear technology develops further. For example, the deployment of innovative reactors in countries with marginal or non-existing nuclear infrastructures would be possible only if the reactors are built, owned and operated by an international nuclear utility or if they are inherently safe and can be delivered as a “black box - nuclear battery”. A number of issues will need to be addressed and conditions and requirements developed if this is going to become a reality. One general requirement for wider utilization of innovative nuclear power will be the public and environmental considerations, which will play a role in the decision making processes. Five main clusters of topics will be handled: • Infrastuctural aspects , typology and consequences for nuclear development. • Industrial requirements for the different innovative concepts. • Institutional developments and requirements for future deployment of nuclear energy. (National as well as international). • Socio-political aspects , a.o. public acceptance and role of governments. • Sustainability: requirements following the need for sustainability. Analysis will be made of the evolution of national and international social, institutional and infrastructure requirements for the deployment of innovative nuclear technology through 2050 and beyond and requirements will be identified following the need for.

Russia is supporting the INPRO Innovative Project, being fulfilled by the IAEA in the field of innovative nuclear energy. The participation of Russia in the INPRO is a part of realization process of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin Initiative, presented at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, on creation of new generation nuclear energy, meeting the requirements of sustainable development and excluding using the nuclear weapons technologies and materials. In 2003 the draft INPRO Methodology for assessment of the innovative nuclear energy systems correspondence to the requirements of sustainable development has been developed. At present time the Methodology’s approbation on the examples of national nuclear power technologies is being completed. It is supposed that the Methodology will be used as a navigator for the world nuclear energy development process. The INPRO stresses the timeliness of nuclear energy development problems. The International Organization on nuclear fuel cycle is the key decision of non-proliferation problem. Important are the questions of interaction and particularities of the INPRO and Generation IV programs. State support and international cooperation are conditions for effective development of nuclear energy.

Guangdong Province has taken the lead in embarking on nuclear power development to resolve its dire lack of primary resources. With the deepening of the on-going structural reform in the electric power sector in China, the market competition scheme is putting electricity generation enterprises under severe strain. Consequently, it is incumbent upon the nuclear power producers to steadily upgrade management, enhance technical capabilities, reduce cost and improve efficiency. At present, gradual application of such efficiency evaluation methodology has already commenced in some sectors in China including the electric power industry. The purpose of this paper is to use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is a cutting-edge approach in the efficiency evaluation field — to study the technological efficiency between nuclear power and coal power in Guangdong Province. The DEA results demonstrate that, as far as Guangdong Province is concerned, the technological efficiency of nuclear power is higher than that of coal power in terms of Technological Efficiency (TE), Pure Technology Efficiency (PTE) and Scale Efficiency (SE). The reason is that nuclear power technology is advanced with a much higher equipment availability factor. Under the same scale, the generation output of nuclear power is far higher than that of equivalent coal power generation. With the envrionemntal protection and sustainable development requirements taken into full account, nuclear power constitutes a clean, safe and highly-efficient energy form which should be extensively harnessed in Guangdong Province to fuel its future continuing economic growth.