Nuclear Science and Engineering

The major challenges of the nuclear power are economic competition, safety, profilication resistance and waste storage. The safety of the nuclear power plants has been enhanced continuously in order to improve the public acceptance. The de regulation of the electricity market in the United States and Europe encourages the competition between the different power generation technologies. The waste storage has been paid great attention. The ALWRs like ABWR, System 80+, EPR and AP 600 development from mid of 1980s are the major commercial products available in the market in the near future. When the time enter the 21 century, US DOE is planning to develop the Generation IV nuclear power system, in order to design one or more nuclear power systems that is market available before or in the year of 2020 and could be used to replace the current nuclear power plants. The modular pebble bed High Temperature Gas cooled Reactor (HTGR) is considered as a prefer candidate in the Generation IV nuclear power systems. The South Africa selected the modular HTGR as the reactor type to develop. The 10 MW test HTGR (HTR 10) designed and constructed in Tsinghua University Beijing is scheduled to reach critical in the year of 2000. Based on the HTR 10 project, China has established her preliminary capability of designing, constructing and manufacturing pebble bed modular HTGRs.