NRG News: ICENES-2000 Conference Major Success

About 100 experts from 23 countries have met this week on an International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES) at NRG in Petten, The Netherlands. They declared that the present concerns against nuclear have to be answered by innovative nuclear technologies that will be available in the next 10-20 years, latest. The next ICENES conference will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico (the USA) on September 2002.
Results from actual research programmes show e.g. that maximal releases of radioactivity can be limited in a way that no evacuations outside the plant fence will be necessary even under failure of all active safety systems. New fuel for existing and future reactors will allow to avoid or reduce the generation of plutonium. They can also be used to burn the growing stockpile of fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons.
Another highlight is the experimental demonstration of the transmutation of long-lived radioactive waste into elements that decay in some hundreds- instead of some hundred thousands of years into normal material. Thus, the burden to future generations from the use of nuclear power can be minimised and controled.
More efficient reactor systems will reduce the 'thermal pollution' by waste heat. They can be applied also for decentralised combined heat and electricity generation as is the case with conventional gas turbine plants.
The growing shortage of fresh water in many developing countries is another big concern already in the next decades. Sea water desalination will be the only countermeasure, but needs a lot of additional energy that can also be provided by nuclear reactors without any danger of radioactive contamination of the water produced.

There was a broad consensus that nuclear power can support the introduction of other regenerative and CO2-free energy systems like solar, wind, etc. Low cost nuclear energy will allow the application of more still expensive alternate systems in an energy mix. The generation of hydrogen by nuclear plants can accelerate the transition to a broad and economic hydrogen use, too.

There was the hope that the controversy on nuclear energy will convert into a rational public discourse on the requirements that sustainable energy supply systems will have to fulfill in future. The experts declared that the innovation potentials of nuclear technologies have to be taken into account with regard to safety improvement, cost and waste reductions when making decisions on future energy supply strategies. As the fuel resources of uranium and thorium are much more than those of oil and gas, there is the chance to counterbalance the OPEC monopol with competitive innnovative nuclear technologies in conjunction with other regenerative energy systems.

Nuclear energy is a fundamental natural force and even the sun is a nuclear reactor. It has been discovered and used only 50 years ago for the first time. Available experience, recent improvements and technological breakthroughs will help to reconcile nuclear power with public opinion and make it a real choice for industrial and political decision makers as a stable competitive complement to the other alternatives. Global collaboration will help to make broad use of competences and facilities to respond to the new challenges of sustainable energy supply systems.

  
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Update 29 September 2000