NPPs have a key advantage in combining low greenhouse gas emissions with highly reliable power supplies. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), NPPs have an emission rate of 12 grams of CO2-equivalent per 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity, which is 3.5 times lower than the similar indicator for solar panels (41 g CO2-equivalent per 1 kWh). At the same time, the average utilisation of nuclear power plants is substantially higher: according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average utilisation of American NPPs totaled 93% in 2021 compared to a mere 24% for photovoltaic generators.
These advantages have stimulated the launch of new nuclear power units throughout 2022. For example, Finland connected to the grid the third power unit with a capacity of 1.6 gigawatt (GW) at the Olkiluoto NPP in March 2022, while Turkey has commenced the construction of a fourth unit with a design capacity of 4.8 GW at the Akkuyu NPP. Meanwhile, new projects are underway with potential to spur the development of the nuclear industry over the next few decades.
For instance, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has completed pouring concrete into the floor slab for the ACP100 Demo Small Modular Reactor at the Changjiang NPP in Hainan Province in southern China. The 125 megawatt (MW) reactor will be put into operation in 2026 and will be able to generate 1 bln kWh of electricity annually, enough to power 526,000 households. In addition to electric power, the reactor will be able to generate heat and industrial steam, and will also be used for water desalination.
The project, dubbed Linglong One, will become the world’s first land-based small nuclear power plant (SNPP). The very first floating SNPP was put into operation in 2020 in the Russian port of Pevek, Chukotka Autonomous District. The plant, which was commissioned by Rosatom Corporation in St. Petersburg, was tested in the port of Murmansk and then transported to Pevek via the Northern Sea Route. By 2028, Rosatom is going to build a land-based SNPP in Yakutia, which will have a 55 MW RITM-200N reactor. Similar projects in the coming years are going to be implemented by the British company Rolls-Royce, which has set up a subsidiary to design SNPPs, and the American company NuScale, which completed a multi-stage certification process for an in-house modular reactor in 2022.
In its turn, Terra Power and the electricity company PacifiCorp have launched a feasibility study for five sodium-cooled fast reactors to be built in the United States by 2035. Unlike light water reactors of the third generation, the new power plants will use liquid metal sodium as a coolant and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) as fuel, in which concentration of the fissile isotope U-235 ranges between 5% and 20% (compared to 3–5% for most modern reactors). The use of HALEU will reduce not only the fuel feed rate but also the size of the reactor fuel assemblies for thermal energy generation. As a result, the specific consumption of concrete during the construction of the reactors will decrease by 80% compared to thermal neutron reactors.
An increase in energy achieved during a thermonuclear fusion reaction is this year’s main breakthrough. This was done for the first time in history by scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The researchers spent 2.05 megajoules of energy to heat the plasma during a controlled experiment at the NIF reactor and were able to get 3.15 megajoules in return. The experiment may pave the way to the commercialisation of thermonuclear fusion with subsequent power generation.