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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
Silva Kalcheva, Edgar Koonen, Pol Gubel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 1 | April 2007 | Pages 36-55
Technical Paper | Best Estimate Methods | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3823
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The subject of this paper is estimation of the maximum values of the heat flux at steady-state nominal operating conditions in the Belgian Material Test Reactor (BR2) at SCK-CEN in Mol. A strong variation of the fuel depletion and the heat flux with the azimuthal direction and dependence on the orientation of the fuel element in the core are obtained. The full-scale three-dimensional (3-D) MCNP&ORIGEN-S heterogeneous geometry model of BR2 with a detailed 3-D isotopic fuel depletion profile, including a detailed azimuthal fuel modeling in the annular concentric plate fuel elements, is used to evaluate the variation of the heat flux with the azimuthal direction in the hot plane. The relative azimuthal power distribution is calculated with MCNP and introduced into ORIGEN-S to evaluate the azimuthal isotopic fuel profile. The applied detailed azimuthal fuel modeling is compared with homogeneous fuel depletion in the hot plane. An increase of the maximum value of the heat flux of 5% for low burnt fuel and 20% for highly burnt fuel due to the azimuthal modeling of the fuel depletion is obtained. A strong variation of the heat flux with the orientation of the fuel element in the core, modeled with the azimuthal fuel profile, is observed. Perturbation effects in the maximum value of the heat flux of 10% for low burnt fuel and up to 40% for highly burnt fuel, correlated to different orientations of the fuel element in the core, are obtained.
