Climate change will create specific risks and challenges for nuclear power plants and the electricity system as a whole. Extreme weather events caused by climate change – such as floods, storms, heat waves and droughts – have already affected the operation of nuclear power plants. Any...

Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role as a sustainable and environmentally acceptable source of energy in the 21st century. Present methods for producing hydrogen are mainly based on the reforming of fossil fuels with subsequent release of greenhouse gases. To avoid producing...

As modern nuclear power programmes mature and large, commercial nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities approach the end of their useful life by reason of age, economics or change of policy on the use of nuclear power, new challenges associated with decommissioning and dismantling come to...

The decommissioning of nuclear power plants is a topic of increasing interest to governments and the industry as many nuclear units approach retirement. This report, based upon data provided by 26 countries and analysed by government and industry experts, covers a variety of reactor types and...

Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role as a sustainable and environmentally acceptable energy carrier in the 21st century. Since natural sources of pure hydrogen are extremely limited, it is necessary to develop technologies to produce large quantities of hydrogen economically. The...

The optimisation of the nuclear fuel cycle is a key issue for the sustainability of nuclear energy. This book presents the papers from a workshop which investigated alternative nuclear energy futures, with emphasis on back-end of the fuel cycle options that could enhance the sustainability of...

Hydrogen has the potential to play an important role as a sustainable and environmentally acceptable energy source in the 21st century. However, hydrogen does not exist as a gas on earth and thus has to be produced from, for example, water or natural gas by different separation techniques. One...

During irradiation, nuclear fuel changes volume, primarily through swelling. This swelling is caused by the fission products and in particular by the volatile ones such as krypton and xenon, called fission gas. Fission gas behaviour needs to be reliably predicted in order to make better use of...

New nuclear reactor designs are expected to have a higher level of safety than current designs. As part of the efforts to achieve this, important safety issues related to the new designs need to be identified at an early stage, and research required for problem resolution defined. These...