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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
Rakesh Chawla, Walter Seifritz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | October 1985 | Pages 228-235
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33721
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The application of a symbiosis between light water reactors (LWRs) and 235U-Pu advanced pressurized water reactors (APWRs) has been found to have certain positive features as a strategy interim to the introduction of fast breeders and Pu-Udepl APWRs. On the basis of a particular model for the two-component system, it has been quantitatively shown how, as a result of the lower Pufiss inventory of the 235U-Pu APWR as well as its self-sufficiency in plutonium, the installed APWR capacity can grow faster than is the case for Pu-Udepl APWRs. The benefits, however, are to be realized at the expense of an increased absolute uranium ore consumption, since the 235U-Pu APWR does require a finite enriched-uranium feed. While, from the point of view of global energy policy, the fast breeder clearly holds the key to a nuclear generating capacity in the terawatt(electric) range, the present delays in its large-scale commercialization render it important to evaluate the pros and cons of alternative interim strategies. It is seen that such evaluations need to be made from the twin viewpoints of (a) improved uranium utilization, relative to standard L WRs, and (b) the quantities of effectively “stored” fissile plutonium.