Nuclear power engineering

Substantial growth in world energy consumption in the XXI century is inevitable, especially in developing countries. Global energy consumption is likely to double by mid-century, even if we start from a very low growth rates. This growth depends on world economic development, population growth and the desire for a more even distribution of energy consumption by region in the world. In the coming decades, hydrocarbon fuels will continue to serve as the main source of energy, but mastered its deposits are exhausted, and the introduction of new traffic requires greater investment costs. The consequence of this should be a gradual change in the infrastructure of energy production due to both economic (price increases and volatility), as well as environmental factors, as well as further technological development of new fuels. Recently, much attention in international discussions on environmental impacts of using fossil fuels. The introduction of global restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and regional limits on other pollutants of the atmosphere will seriously affect the structure of the evolving global energy and will require significant additional investment to curb emissions growth. Positive solution to these problems will contribute to the development of nuclear energy. To globally significant impact on energy production, energy security and weakening the greenhouse effect, nuclear power should be increased by mid-century by 4-5 times by now been achieved. The presence of nuclear facilities of this scale raises important questions of resource availability of cheap fuel, waste and nuclear proliferation. Obviously, the further development of nuclear power as necessary to ensure compliance with the economic criteria for acceptability and technical security. Large-scale development of nuclear power suggests its use in more countries than at present. It is given relating to nuclear power safety issues and non-proliferation poses additional challenges in its development. Speaking about the sustainability of nuclear power, it must be remembered that it takes its place among the energy producers. Currently in many countries, it provides basic electrical load, while in Russia, in addition, release to export additional quantities of fossil fuels. In the future, nuclear energy will gradually replace the natural gas to produce heat for the process, and ultimately ensure the production of hydrogen from water, which saves natural organic materials for non-energy use. In addition, the term will be utilized desalination of seawater using nuclear energy.

The world has enough nuclear material to meet the needs of nuclear energy in fuels for decades to come, even when working in open loop. However, later it will inevitably collide with the limited resources of cheap uranium. In this connection, will inevitably have to implement the closure of the fuel cycle, and the expanded reproduction of the fuel when used as a raw material of uranium and thorium. Introduction of innovative nuclear technology resources problems of nuclear fuel can be removed altogether. Utmost importance is the problem of handling large volumes of ore during the extraction of uranium, spent fuel and highly radioactive waste. This includes work on effective methods of reprocessing of spent fuel, the incineration of the most dangerous actinides and possibly long-lived fission products.