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The IAEA International Conference on Opportunities and Challenges for Water Cooled Reactors in the 21st Century was held in Vienna, from 27-30 October 2009. More than 260 participants from 54 Member States and four international organizations participated in the conference. As the world moves into the 21st century and faces new challenges, such as the growth in world energy demand or the threat of global climate change, nuclear energy is seen as one of the sources that could substantially and sustainably contribute to powering the world. The need to secure affordable and environmentally-friendly energy cannot be addressed without nuclear energy. In this context, it is expected that Water Cooled Reactors will continue to be the cornerstone of the nuclear industry for the 21st century and beyond. In recent times, there has been a two-prong approach on the expansion of nuclear power. On the one hand, countries with existing nuclear power programmes have made a large effort towards making the most of their current nuclear assets by capitalizing in many years of operational excellence, as well as by extending and optimizing their operational life. On the other hand, and despite these life management efforts, there is a clear need to eventually replace current nuclear capacity and also to meet increased energy demand in an environmentally sound manner by building new nuclear power plants. To ensure the safety and performance of existing nuclear power plants, most facilities have implemented plant life management programmes consistent with their strategic plan and their overall goals, objectives, and commitments. These plant life management programmes should be established as a set of plant-specific guidelines and generic requirements based on the periodic safety reviews issued by the IAEA or referring to commonly accepted regulatory practices such as generic aging lessons learned and standard review plans issued by the US NRC. An effective plan life management programme determines what systems need to be analyzed, what systems can be maintained, the priority order of the systems to be modernized, how the systems should be modernized, etc. To support the future role of Water Cooled Reactors, substantial design and development programmes are underway in a number of Member States to incorporate additional technology improvements into advanced nuclear power plant designs. One of the key features of advanced nuclear reactor designs is their very high level of safety due to a reduction in the probability and consequences of accidents and to an increase in the operator time allowed to better assess and properly react to abnormal events. Additional efforts, however, are needed in many areas such as the development of advanced materials and reliable components able to support longer plant lifetimes and more demanding working conditions, the optimum balance in the use of active and passive safety systems, the effective use of alternative fuels and advanced fuel designs and the attainment of higher conversion rates in Water Cooled Reactors. The conference demonstrated the value of an open exchange of information between experts from different countries and different organizations. The presentations covered a wide range of subjects including the challenges and opportunities encountered when starting or expanding a nuclear power programme, very specific solutions applicable to existing nuclear plants for rector pressure vessel integrity, material degradation, ageing management, non destructive examination methods and tools used in various stages of plant life management programmes, as well as advanced Water Cooled Reactor concepts and associated technologies and innovative applications of Water Cooled Reactors. The IAEA wishes to thank all the participants for their contributions to the conference. Mr. Ki Sig Kang, Ms. Sama Bilbao y León and Mr. Oszvald Glockler from the Division of Nuclear Power were the IAEA officers responsible for the organization of the International Conference and the compilation of this publication. |