Collaborative Projects
Roadmaps For a Transition to Globally Sustainable Nuclear Energy Systems (ROADMAPS)
While there are several on-going national and international efforts on technology development for innovative nuclear reactors and fuel cycles, roadmaps for a transition to globally sustainable nuclear energy systems (NES) still need to be elaborated.
ACTIVITY PROPOSAL
The ROADMAPS collaborative project has the objective to develop a structured approach for achieving globally sustainable nuclear energy systems (NES), providing models of cooperation among countries and a template for documenting actions, scope of work, and timeframes for specific collaborative efforts by particular stakeholders (the roadmap template).
To make a meaningful contribution to the growing energy needs in the 21st century, nuclear energy needs to be made available at affordable levels for all countries. ROADMAPS will address several levels of NES sustainability starting from safe, secure, economical and publically acceptable nuclear power with security of supply for newcomers and ending up with advanced systems where all actinides are recycled. The roadmap template will, inter alia, indicate where savings in time, effort and resources needed to embark on a desired NES sustainability level could be achieved through collaboration among countries.
The roadmap template will address in detail the timelines, the technologies, the institutional mechanisms, the economic arrangements, and will summarize the drivers and impediments/options to overcome them, for a collaborative way to future sustainable NES. The template will provide a global view and guidance for regions or countries to develop their own more specific roadmaps in a compatible format. As these regional or country-level roadmaps are developed and linked, the composite may grow into an integrated plan for achieving global sustainability of nuclear energy systems.
To achieve its objective, ROADMAPS will integrate the outputs of GAINS, SYNERGIES and several other INPRO collaborative projects, as well as the outputs of and the IAEA Technical Working Groups on nuclear reactors and fuel cycles. The collaborative project will, therefore, serve as an umbrella to facilitate effective use of the outputs of the INPRO projects by Member States. The ROADMAPS collaborative project will identify gaps on a collaborative way to globally sustainable NES but will leave it for future projects to develop solutions for those gaps.
ROADMAPS activity is proposed for a biennium of 2014-15. The responsible officer will be Vladimir KUZNETSOV: V.Kuznetsov@iaea.org
DELIVERABLES
A periodically updated Nuclear Energy Series publication presenting the developed structured approach for achieving globally sustainable NES (the roadmap template and guidance). The report will include (as Annexes to the report – contributions from Member States) any collaborative or country level roadmaps that may be volunteered by participants during the term of the project.
The target audiences are decision makers and senior technical experts working in State institutions and non-governmental organizations, nuclear industry and utilities and universities and R&D institutions working in the area of planning/ implementation of a nuclear power programme.
Preparatory meeting for the project, convened on 18-22 March 2013 at the IAEA Headquarters in Vienna.