title: Nuclear power in the 21st century: Challenges and possibilities.
abstract: The current situation and possible future developments for nuclear power--including fission and fusion processes--is presented. The fission nuclear power continues to be an essential part of the low-carbon electricity generation in the world for decades to come. There are breakthrough possibilities in the development of new generation nuclear reactors where the life-time of the nuclear waste can be reduced to some hundreds of years instead of the present time-scales of hundred thousand of years. Research on the fourth generation reactors is needed for the realisation of this development. For the fast nuclear reactors, a substantial research and development effort is required in many fields--from material sciences to safety demonstration--to attain the envisaged goals. Fusion provides a long-term vision for an efficient energy production. The fusion option for a nuclear reactor for efficient production of electricity has been set out in a focussed European programme including the international project of ITER after which a fusion electricity DEMO reactor is envisaged.
authors.affiliation: MTA Centre for Energy Research, KFKI Campus, P.O.B. 49, Budapest 114, 1525, Hungary. akos.horvath@energia.mta.hu.
authors.forename: Akos
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Horvath
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden. erk@kth.se.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rachlew
mesh_terms: D004560:Electricity; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources / Q000145:classification; D009688:Nuclear Reactors / Q000295:instrumentation; D011210:Power Plants / Q000295:instrumentation
keywords: Fission; Fusion; Fusion plasma physics; Nuclear power; Nuclear waste; Reactor physics