Sustainable Nuclear Fuel Cycles and World Regional Issues

Abstract

In the present paper we have attempted to associate quantified impacts with a forecasted nuclear energy development in different world regions, under a range of hypotheses on the energy demand growth. It gives results in terms of availability of uranium resources, required deployment of fuel cycle facilities and reactor types. In particular, the need to achieve short doubling times with future fast reactors is investigated and quantified in specific world regions. It has been found that a crucial feature of any world scenario study is to provide not only trends for an idealized "homogeneous" description of the global world, but also trends for different regions in the world. These regions may be selected using rather simple criteria (mostly of a geographical type), in order to apply different hypotheses for energy demand growth, fuel cycle strategies and the implementation of various reactor types for the different regions. This approach was an attempt to avoid focusing on selected countries, in particular on those where no new significant energy demand growth is expected, but instead to provide trends and conclusions that account for the features of countries that will be major players in the world energy development in the future. © 2012 by the authors.