Technical Meeting “INPRO Service to Member States: Scenario Analysis and Decision Support for Development of Nuclear Energy Systems with Enhanced Sustainability”

The International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) was established in 2000 – as an IAEA flagship project, through a General Conference resolution – with the goal of ensuring a sustainable nuclear energy supply to help meet 21^st century global energy needs. INPRO’s activities are centred on the key concepts of global nuclear energy sustainability and the development of long-range nuclear energy strategies, so that nuclear energy is and remains available to meet national energy needs.

INPRO is part of the IAEA integrated services provided to Member States considering initial development or expansion of their nuclear energy programmes. Within INPRO Task 1, titled “Global Scenarios”, INPRO performs nuclear energy evolution scenario modelling to understand key issues of transition to future nuclear energy systems with enhanced sustainability.

The GAINS and SYNERGIES collaborative projects of the INPRO Task 1 have developed a framework for analysis and sustainability evaluation of nuclear energy evolution scenarios from the present fleet of nuclear reactors and fuel cycles to future NES architectures with innovative technological solutions.

The INPRO collaborative project KIND developed an approach to comparative evaluation of nuclear energy system/ nuclear energy evolution scenario options. The KIND approach is based on the selection and use of a limited number of key indicators along with the state-of-the-art judgement aggregation and uncertainty analysis methods.

Through integration of the results of the GAINS, SYNERGIES and KIND collaborative projects the collaborative project ROADMAPS has developed a structured approach for achieving globally sustainable nuclear energy, providing models for international cooperation and a template for documenting actions, scope of work, and timeframes for specific collaborative efforts by particular stakeholders.

In all the above-mentioned activities valuable experience has been accumulated and software tools have been developed and validated to support modelling, analysis and evaluation. Sharing this experience with INPRO members and providing them with training on application of the relevant software tools developed within the INPRO is being organized into a new INPRO service to Member States, titled “Scenario Analysis and Decision Support for Development of Nuclear Energy Systems with Enhanced Sustainability”. This service will include:

• Delivering a comprehensive set of training lectures, exercises, and relevant documents;
• Providing training materials for specific application of developed software;
• Consulting on nuclear energy system modelling, on comparative evaluation of nuclear energy system options and on road mapping the path of sustainable development of nuclear energy systems.

The overall objective of IAEA/INPRO services is to provide assistance, training and consultancy to Member States in regional and national long term nuclear energy analysis and strategic planning taking into account the potential of technical innovation and cooperation among countries.

The purpose of the event is to (i) present the scope and contents of the new INPRO service; (ii) review the full draft of a new Nuclear Energy Series report entitled Scenario Analysis and Decision Support for Development of Nuclear Energy Systems with Enhanced Sustainability: An INPRO Service for Member States; (iii) present and discuss the structure and content of a pilot training course on the new INPRO service; and (iv) put forward suggestions for the short name of the new INPRO service.