 Welcome back everyone. I'll ask those who are with us live here in the hall to please take your seats so that we can get started and also very warm greetings to our online audience as well. We are now beginning our first technical session of this year's Scientific Forum and we're going to use the next couple of hours to highlight scientific and technological breakthroughs in the nuclear sector ranging from innovative reactor designs to new construction methods. And we're going to be exploring how they can boost nuclear's role in the transition to clean energy with a particular focus on developments that support long-term operation of existing reactors. A subject we heard a few remarks on in our previous session and also how they can support use of nuclear in combination with fluctuating renewable sources. So in this session all of our speakers will be participating virtually. We will see them first of all in pre-recorded presentations and a bit later they will join us live via WebEx to answer your questions dear audience and that goes for the audience in this room but also for our online audience you can submit questions via the chat function of the IAEA conferences app and if you are with us as a speaker I'm going to ask as a virtual speaker I'm going to ask that you please mute your microphone when you are not immediately speaking so that we get a stronger broadband connection. If you do pose a question it will be curated and read out as it were by our online moderator Jeff. It's great to have you with us. Hi Jeff. And please so that Jeff can also let us know. There he is again for everybody brightly lit and please do let us know who you are and where you are joining us from so that Jeff can give us those facts as well. And one last point to streamline our proceedings I will be grouping speakers for the Q&A in clusters so you will will will take three or four presentations at a time and then we'll go to that particular group for answers to your questions. If you have joined us at previous for then our first speaker in this session is a very familiar face. She's director general of the World Nuclear Association. Just a couple of years ago she made a very compelling argument at the scientific forum for making nuclear power a key part of the solution to the climate crisis. An issue that has become even more important since. So it is a pleasure to hand over to the co-founder and former president of Women in Nuclear Ms. Agneta Riesing. I would like to give you an overview of nuclear energy systems and give you an overview. An overview of things about things that have happened recently. Not about things very very far into the future and not about things that happened very long time ago but recent development. My name is Agneta Riesing. I'm the director general of World Nuclear Association. If the world is to address climate change while meeting sustainable development ambitions then we need to start growing fast. At the same time the amount of energy demand is expected to grow and the electricity demand will make up a major share of this as we increasingly electrify heating and transport. In this graph you can see the expectation for nuclear energy in the middle of the road scenario of the IPPC 1.5 degree report. The middle of the road scenario is where we can go on with our lives and also the developing world can have similar types of lives. Nuclear energy needs to grow 6-fold by 2050 and achieve 25% of electricity generation to keep the global temperature rise bearable. However IEA and IAEA projections show that the projected growth of nuclear energy will not be sufficient to meet these needs. Innovation can help to overcome many of the challenges that nuclear energy is currently facing and which is holding back its growth. Fortunately there are recent signs that the speed of innovation in the nuclear sector is accelerating. This is occurring across the life cycle of nuclear power plant and across the wider fuel cycle. In many key countries and growth countries where you have nuclear director projects are being delivered successfully to you. A recent highlight is the construction of TN15 in less than five years. Innovation in design and construction practices are driven and are also driving down project costs and project risks and schedules. Examples include digitalisation of plant information which can help improve project governance and reduce the indirect costs of a nuclear project. Learning by doing is critical to productivity and development of nuclear plants. For example on Hinkley Point C installing one ton of steel work on unit 1 it took 25 hours. On unit 2 it takes just 60 hours. Innovation continues to drive improvement in the performance of today's nuclear plants. Notable innovations include additive manufacturing of bespoke components such as the one pictured here. There are also nuclear problems of suppliers because many suppliers might have not doing these components anymore. Artificial intelligence is being explored for use in automating scheduling of tasks. This should reduce the time and complexity of outages and load following alterations that can help plants provide extra flexibility to deal with high intermittency by the renewables. Innovation for creating the nuclear plants of tomorrow. These will not only provide electricity but also range of other energy applications such as domestic heat, high temperature and raster process heat, hydrogen production and desalination. The demand for low carbon heat is huge according to IEA heat accounted for 50% of global final energy consumption in 2018. Special note are the SMR technologies and they are being reviewed by many nations. We now have a demonstration plans operating and or about to start construction. Notable examples are the floating nuclear power plant Academic Lomonosov which is supplying both heat and power to a remote Arctic community. The Chinese high temperature reactor which should start operations within the next year or two. And the new scale reactor has received US design certification approval in September this year. As more and more SMR designs mature the role is expected to grow rapidly in the 2030s and 2440s. Here at World Nuclear Association I made a special report on all the reactor designs and how they work together in the future. Innovations in the fuel cycle are improving the competitiveness and the security of the fuel supply as well as the performance of the reactors and enhanced fuels and the safety of nuclear operations and not for the potential for longer operating cycles plant operates and cost savings. Closing the fuel cycle with fast reactors and mock fuel dramatically increases the amount of energy available from fuel and decreases the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of. Of course some of the more famous challenges in the nuclear revolve around the back end of the fuel cycle in the end of the plant's life cycle here too we see some big and important changes happening on decommissioning. A number of important topics addressed through international cooperation and exchange between various research programs the IAEA has made a variety of valuable resources available on its nuclear website. Important recent examples of technical innovation in decommissioning include automation in robotics. On high level waste disposal it is important to note that there are many verified disposal concepts for example national repository programs we already have sustainable solutions for nuclear waste it is great to see new technology open and options will start to emerge. One of those is deep isolation in January 2019 then placed a prototype waste canister 600 meters in a borehole and then retreated using technology adapted from natural gas industry but beyond technology there are of course many exciting technologies making their way into the nuclear sector but it is also important to remember that innovation is more than just technology for the nuclear sector innovation market design and financing and regulation and also in project delivery will be key to reducing costs of building, unlocking the full potential of existing facilities facilitating advanced reactors international cooperation remains key to overcoming the barriers facing new technologies and increasing their spread and uptake especially I like to note that Clean Energy Ministerial nice future initiative one event to place just last weekend and they highlighted at that event the flexibility benefits of nuclear energy and therefore the important role it must play with renewables in a future decarbonized mix. I'm pleased to mention that the World Nuclear Association is supporting a number of these international initiatives we are also working with other international organizations such as United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on the role of nuclear energy in achieving sustainable development and climate change goals on the conclusions nuclear innovation is driving improvement in all parts of the industry enhancing reliability, efficiency, economics and flexibility nuclear is mature reliable affordable and need innovative policy to fast track the deployment of large scale reactors to meet the increasing demand for clean electricity and to do this now innovation is accelerating the development and commercialization of SMRs opening up additional applications for nuclear energy the time to market will be key to the deployment of the innovative technologies thank you very much I'm happy to take questions and as I said we will come back to Agneteris'ing a little bit later for a Q&A her remarks by the way on nuclear innovation will certainly set up our discussion on that topic tomorrow when we look at that very very important issue in our third session of the forum so we've heard some strong claims throughout the day so far regarding the benefits of nuclear power as part of a clean energy mix but how can we way and assess those benefits in comparison to other sources. Our next speaker has developed a sophisticated system for assessing emissions he's a researcher at the laboratory des sciences du climat et de l'environment near Paris he was lead author of the carbon cycle chapter in the last IPCC climate assessment report. Here's the presentation by Philippe Cies. Good morning my name is Philippe Cies and I'm glad to present how our recent work to monitor near real-time CO2 emissions can help to evaluate the effectiveness of clean energy evasion. We have to see that countries report their emissions with the time lag of about two years after the emissions happened for annex one countries more than five years for non-anx one countries this is insufficient for tracking progress of emission reductions in the context of the Paris agreement and this is clearly insufficient to understand how large disturbances like the COVID-19 have affected our societies and the production and consumption of energy. So what we have done here is that we have collected and compiled a lot of activity data such as individual aircraft and ship tracks gas delivery to different countries on an hourly to daily basis, hourly data on electricity production, transport and types and mobility information from cell phone application, GPS on-cars and other data set all this combined with weather and we have derived for six sectors industry electricity residential and commercial buildings, road and ship transportation the first models of daily CO2 emissions here. When you look at the split between sectors you can see here that the power sector had a strong decrease of emissions in February and then in the middle of March the most affected sectors have been the ground transportation, aviation and to some extent the industry. If you zoom in the power sector you can see here the different sub-sectors. We found that the global demand has decreased by about 5% in the first half of the year but interestingly renewable supply has stayed higher than normal and this thing is a downward adjustment of electricity supply from fossil fuel sources the gas share has increased in the United States because of the low market price for this fuel and regarding the nuclear we see a small global net reduction in particular lower values in the US and the EU but a coincident big increase with the confinement in China, India and Japan. If you look at the power sector dionocycles you can see in the left average monthly dionocycles for each source of electricity we see that the warm winter conditions in addition to the COVID and before the COVID has reduced the electricity demand in the US we do see a very strong increase of gas and massive decrease of coal for price reasons as well as a decrease of nuclear a decrease of all the fossil fuel and a decrease of nuclear you can see on the top left plot that the shape of dionocycles has changed before and after the confinement with a shift of the peak of consumption between the morning and the afternoon which is also a challenge for renewable energy supply in the next release of our product we are looking now at data at facility level using thermic infrared plumes from satellites like Sentinel-2 you can see here that before the confinement for the steel factory in France there were several blast furnace active and they all shut down during the confinement so this gives us information about industry and power sector activity at the level of individual plants and to conclude I would like to reflect with you on how the kind of scientific study of sector-specific CO2 emissions per country can be used to really better evaluate the effectiveness of clean energy transition and investment. First of all I believe it's important to have a disclosure of how emissions are factory changes in each country and regions which is not the case as of today suddenly this data really allow us to understand why low carbon electricity sources can take over our fossil sources under specific demand conditions and also under specific weather conditions. Specialized data help to prioritize the kind of most cost-effective reduction of emission hotspots, low-hungry inputs for mitigation and as the data will continue it also allow to monitor structural changes that are expected in the near term from low carbon policies and economic stimulus packages which are related to the impact of you know emissions in lower carbon intensity also improve technologies leading to different emission factors because CO2 is co-emitted with carbon monoxide and NOx which are important atmospheric pollutants it also helps to assess what are the co-benefits or the trade-off of reducing CO2 emissions for improving atmospheric pollution and air quality and last but no least fine granulometry data were also allowed to monitor city-scale transitions with new urban infrastructures and city climate action plans. With that I would like to thank you very much. And again we will come back to Philippe Ciesse shortly we hear next from the chief designer of a Chinese large advanced pressurized water reactor that is one international praise for its innovative approach to cost-efficiency and safety management. He is a prominent pioneer in China's nuclear industry and also serves as a member of the standing group on nuclear energy that advises Director General Grossi here at the IAEA. It's a pleasure to hand over now to the video presentation by Mingguang Zing. Ladies and gentlemen Hi from China this is Dr. Zing Mingguang from State Power Investment Corporation of China. I do appreciate the agency to invite me to make a presentation on nuclear power is right way to meet both for climate and sustainable development. As you know there's a great change in this year. The course wise happened the electric power generation reduced but the stable and reliable supply became a challenge. So energy provision actually at any time is important to cool down the social crisis. It's very important to support the sustainable development. And one way the artificial intelligence just to improve the efficiency of power generation transmission and naturalization while itself consuming a lot of the energy. So I do believe that developed artificial intelligence will become heavy energy consuming industry just like the heavy industry of the steel complex before. In the year 2019 the total global power generation in the world is about 27,000 kilowatt hour while in China spend about 7,000 27%. In China the nuclear installed capacity is about 50 gigawatt 2.4% of the power installation capacity of the two grade. The power generation is about 4.6. And in order to achieve the goal of the temperature rise less than 200 degrees compared to the previous agreement the global nuclear power target from world nuclear association is up to 25% power supply for main industry road by 2050. I just say main industry road not the rural road. The solar winds expansion could be good for the general power supply especially for the remote area but won't resolve the reliable stable heavy industry base road operation in the road center. So I believe with China great power capacity would be from 2,000 gigawatt now to up to the 3500 gigawatt before 2050. So nuclear power generation from now China 4.6% would be right soon up to the road average 10%. I do believe in the future especially around the 2050 the Chinese nuclear power could be expansion to the 15 up to the 25 according to the real situation of the competitiveness of the nuclear power itself. The problems to be resolved in the nuclear power industry as you know quite many people against the nuclear power development due to the spent fuel, red waste impacts from risk of accidents. How to resolve the spent fuel? I do believe that the process with the new technology should be used for such a spent fuel to into the new resources. To minimize the red waste is the design requirements for the new plant and to reduce the risk of the impacts from the accidents. Also very important for the new safeguards, new design of the nuclear power plants with the more intrinsic features. In the future we think that from the nuclear power industry the design purpose all the consequences from the any events of accidents should keep inside of the nuclear power plant. You shouldn't any impacts from any events and accidents to society. On the other hand the economy is more important to have the good competitiveness with the affordable prices of electricity and the nuclear energy especially high safety, high reliability high stability, clean economic low carbon emission, high efficiency. Here I just presented several options from big to the small. The big is good for the electricity generations. Now with the new technology like the passive technology, AP100, CAP1400 the coal meltdown frequency could up to 10 minus 6 and the left could up to the 10 minus 7 and the electricity in China we can reach about 6 cents per kilowatt hour. And the small one just the land star one could be used heating purposes in the rural area in the remote area but some combined you know applications like the land star 5 could be for the small power grid and also for the heating purposes with electricity less than 8 cents per kilowatt hour and the heating about 6 US dollars per gigajoule. The possible solutions for different purposes like in the small districts in the urban rural with a smart micro energy grid such a grid could be supported by the solar winds storage and the small nuclear power plant. The heavy industrial center especially in the future for the 5G for the data load center or big data center with the macro grid with artificial intelligence management like hydraulic nuclear with a big unit storage for sale and also solar wind. Mostly important for the solar wind they needed the capability of the grid the load follow as the solar wind energy supply is intermittent China is a bigger country so we have the multiple purpose the power supply from nuclear power plant. The north could be used the heating vectors the south especially along with the coast use the bigger unit to have the power supply and other areas according to the utilization or the applications can select the different types of the vectors but the nuclear power I do believe the future is promising. Thank you. Thank you very much for that presentation so we will now come to our Q&A session and I would like to begin first of all by hopefully getting all of our speakers back with us in a group so that we can field questions to them and here they come I believe and I'm going to try to take questions from this room first so if you have a question in this room I'm going to ask you to give me a sign raise your hand and also you will then use the microphone at your desk please so that our speakers can hear you and after that I'll go to questions online if we are getting some and Jeff is kind of nodding his head but also giving me a sign that perhaps we'll wait a bit so if you're in our online audience and you want to ask a question we'd really like to hear it please use the chat function on the IAEA conference's app and Jeff is already to field those questions and pass them on to me so I have a few questions of my own but I don't want to use them until we first see if we have live questions in the room. Who has a question for one of our speakers any one of them? Okay go ahead please let me make sure Izmini do we have the speakers with us I'm not seeing them yet in the yes we do. Okay so please go ahead honorable speaker from Switzerland. Vener Burkart question to the last speaker what's the smallest SMR he has in his portfolio he was not very specific on the size of these small reactors so that would be a question actually for Mingguang Zheng are you with us actually we developed several models to fit the different applications for example for the heating for the time being in China in the inland nuclear power plant is not permitted right now but the future I think it could be so for the future the compacted nuclear power plant could be used but for time being only can use the heating reactor and the heating reactor just depends on the you know the city scale for example some middle cities need about two or four units of 200 megawatts for the heating that just 25 to the 50% of the heating supply but only by the heating the cost of the prices is quite a time for the time being but in the future we think with the scale the unit of megawatts could be reduced I'm just looking over at our technical staff to find out if we can actually see Mr. Cheng I guess I'm hearing that we can't see Mr. Cheng okay if you are able to put your camera on Mr. Cheng then we could also see you as well as hear you but okay looks like you're with us now hello yes that's great we unfortunately didn't see you for that answer but I think we heard it well enough so hopefully that did answer the question good very good who else has a question for anyone of the three speakers anyone in the room okay I'm not seeing any hands going up yet Jeff anything over there okay then I will I will pose a couple of questions of my own and if you decide you do have a question here in the room give me a sign same to Jeff so let me start out with a question to Agneta Leasing and it's great to see you again Agneta I'd like to ask you are those various innovations that you talked about just now in your remarks which ones do you see as the absolute most crucial if we want and must boost the share of nuclear in the overall energy mix you said it's imperative to do that if we want to get to our climate goals so what do you see as the most crucial innovations there that's a very big question oh sorry oh I'm not muted okay thank you I would say that we need all the target for climate change is so tough that we need all types of resources that are no carbon as well as all types of innovations but I would say if we are going to do something fast and that is what we really have to do we have to now start to act in fact go with the law we act to start to know how to build and repeat and repeat what we already can do I think the task is enormous absolutely enormous and the time scale is not that long but over time we will see many of these SMRs coming in and heating is extremely important because heating has emissions that are quite large from the whole energy sector so it's more or less half of the emissions coming from heating so I think it's very important to have those units also for industrial process heating I think these are absolutely key more people in the world are dying from having no heat than those that are dying because it's too hot thank you very much so if I can just repeat that one more time it sounds like you're saying to us yes innovations are important particularly when we look at the longer term but if we want to start moving now and we were reminded in our opening session about the long lead times especially on big infrastructure projects that if we want to start moving now we really need to be going with what we have and simply scaling it up that's very is my sound better? there's a little bit of drop out but we can hear you good thank you very much maybe we'll come back to you in just a moment a question for Philip if you're yes very good to see you so your emission studies you described a number of the issues that you are going to be able to get more concrete data on can they help you to identify the optimal energy mix for meeting climate goals if you want to look at the long term scenarios of course you have to play on the side and you have to have policy on the supply side to have the right sources of energy mainly low carbon energies like nuclear renewable or hydro what our data can help us to do is to understand the underappreciated effect of weather and climate change on the energy supply and the energy demand when you have more heatwave in summer it calls for more electricity during the hot months and when you have milder winter like the winter of 2020 with about 5 degrees warmer than average in regions like Russia you also have to adjust the energy supply so our data can help us to understand the interactions between climate change and emissions and those interactions have been perhaps underappreciated when building scenarios of mitigation there is also a feedback of climate change on the energy production system and therefore on CO2 emissions apropos underappreciation as Mingguang Zheng just reminded us nuclear power itself in many places somewhat underappreciated the public remains wary in many places of nuclear power plants can the insights from your studies perhaps also improve communication and understanding among publics and governments when it comes to the cost benefit balance on nuclear yes I think it does help to close and to understand the role that nuclear power plays in the energy supply in particular when you have a peak of demand of course having new and accurate data to monitor how the energy mix is fast changing across countries and the globe it's a useful tool for public information policy design but in the end of course the decision of building cleaner energy systems belongs to policy makers and governments thank you very much and then also a question for Mingguang Zheng and I hope I'm more or less saying your name correctly we just heard Agneta Riesing say we need to go with what we have the technologies that we know innovation is important but we also simply need to be scaling up China in fact is doing just that you are building more nuclear power plants than any other country what can other countries learn from China's experience also that might help them overcome challenges with trying to scale up and build more first we would like to say use the proven technology use the proven mode of the cooperation between you know among the contractors and also the proven equipment that's very important to reduce the risk in the implementation and the second we should tell the public that now the safety of the nuclear power plant is much better than before all the nuclear power plant happened with the same accident actually they are quite old philosophy of the safety and the technology so now actually the new design requirements new design basis are much you know serious much severe to compare with the before we think the safety especially intrinsic safety is guaranteed and the second we should say that the prices resulting from the construction resulting from the equipment supply resulting from the operation especially by the spell parts should be reduced so the prices of the energy and the nuclear power could be affordable by the public and so the very important you should have the clear understanding or clear demonstration that any events and accident from the plant couldn't impact to the society not beyond the site of your plant so you should enhance your intrinsic safety furthermore and also to reduce the impacts of the red waste and also impacts of the some accident risk so we think that the nuclear power yourself you should try best to demonstrate that you are becoming better your technology your prices and your demonstration and the second the public should have the proper communications with them if you don't let them go into with you they don't know so they couldn't accept anyhow in the society they always you know two positions once against once favorable to the nuclear power plant you have to get more people for the favorable nuclear power plant development and we do believe that the future of nuclear is a promise it's necessary thank you very much so some synergy there also with Philip Cies' answer about how to perhaps improve enhance public acceptance I have a question over here if you would please and tell us if you don't mind who you are where you're from and to whom your question is addressed thank you very much my name is Amir Mansoor and I'm from the permission of Pakistan first of all very big thanks to agency for arranging such a wonderful scientific forum for us my question is for Dr Cheng Ming Wang and it's a very simple question what the member states would like to listen as it was discussed that from large water reactors now we are converting to small water reactors we being a pro nuclear power state we definitely have no objection in this but one thing that always comes in the mind is regarding its economics for the small water reactors as Dr Cheng you just explained that maybe there is certain market for the small modular reactors as I explained in your presentation I was of the view that you being a designer what progress have you made in ensuring that the cost is going down for maybe the nth reactor number one number two and have you been working on standardization of maybe some of the systems or some components if not the whole reactors because we know in the world there are more than 50 or 70 designs so the member states or any country embarking would be very interested in having some kind of standardization in the models thank you very much thank you very much I'm going to go straight to Dr Cheng and then I'll come back to you in just a moment go ahead please Dr Cheng actually the competitiveness of the economy for the small water reactor is very important firstly as I just mentioned the technology should be developed should be proven secondly you should have the complete supply of the equipment and the material system if you don't have such a complete system it's very difficult to get the competitive you know prices so that's important to have the complete supply system of the equipment and the materials and the third actually you should try your best because the safety of the small reactor is higher than the bigger one but the requirements for the small one may be similar to the bigger one there's no economy so you should try to find out the new review or licensing requirements for the small reactors for example for the zones definitions for the safety definitions and for the operation requirements so with such a change in the lines of high safety you try to get a better economy that's the efforts should be made by the nuclear power industry and the third very important you should compete with some you know target for example you should compete with the gas you know heating if your prices is less than gas heating I think in the future you are promising for you your price is higher than all others than no future for you so you should try your best from the equipment supply from the proven technology from the good application and also from the operation management in the future so with the artificial intelligence we think that the operation people's load could be reduced also the members to be used for the operation should have also been reduced to make the good economy thank you thank you very much now I had a question from Myanmar and then I want to come to Jeff if there's online questions and we'll bundle those because we are now just about at the end of our time hello my name is Joseph I'm from Myanmar mission first of all I'd like to thank all speakers for their excellent presentation I want to direct my question to Dr. Seng she designed our nuclear industry from China in his video presentation I noted that he talked about the various purposes for solution for different purposes so he mentioned mainly two things solar and wind power and storage and the other thing is heavy load for industry so I wish to just for my clarification it's a data sense suggesting that the solar and wind power is mostly suitable for I mean light industry or nuclear power is most suitable for heavy load industry just for clarification can you clarify please thank you thank you then we'll get a really quick clarification from Dr. Zheng you're still there I hope your camera is currently off there you are he's coming hello could you just briefly clarify did you hear the question yeah actually you know the solar and winds are not so good for the base load operation so if you use the solar and winds in the future we think need to be supported by the nuclear by the fossil power plant or by the hydraulic to meet the stable power supply and second for the solar and winds I think in the future it's good for the hydrogen production or transportation energy supply so in the future from different applications the nuclear could for the base load operation for the heavy industry for the load heavy you know center so the solar and the winds and other resources of energy could be used for the different purpose that's just build up at the map for the energy supply in the future thank you very much Jeff what do you have for us thanks Melinda we have a couple questions that have come in through the app they're related of course to what we've heard so far but perhaps we'll go with this one I guess agneterizing might be the best for this financial investments in renewables outstrip nuclear by a large margin nuclear is in decline in advanced economies especially in deregulated energy sectors can you talk about the future for nuclear power without tackling its financial competitive competitiveness great question thank you very much we'll pass that straight on to Agneter yes I would like to say that there is a lack of financing in certain places in certain circumstances if we look to the cost of nuclear that is the levelized cost of electricity as well as the system cost nuclear is the cheapest of all low-carbon technologies as well as it's the only low-carbon technology that delivers base load and there is a lot to do on financing because these markets are failing and we see also we are failing the climate change goal that has to be innovation markets in order to make nuclear moving forward because we all need nuclear and we need it to grow six fold if we're going to have a good future reach 1.5 degrees so a lot of innovation is needed in the deregulated markets to make it function so we get the world we want and again that is an issue that we will return to tomorrow as well when we talk about barriers so I think Jeff has one more question for us yeah we have one more it's about SMRs the question is can SMRs really deliver on the promise of clean and affordable energy before 2030 considering that countries are interested in them but no one is actually at the moment buying this technology and to whom did they specify to whom that should go it wasn't specified okay who would like to take a shot at that question yeah in China actually we try to build the SMR in your future and we think that with such a development for the multiple applications just the paved road for the future SMR could be multiple applications for the power generation for the heating purpose process heat even you can have the deceleration so if only the application may be economy not good but with multiple applications I do believe that SMR with the competitiveness of the economy so there is a promising there is a future thank you very much and Yeta did you want to add anything to that it's very important here to say not on the market yet but there are already some constructions so it takes time to build up the industry capability and of course nobody can right now easily buy a reactor that is just now being licensed or just in demonstration some experience we need to move forward but I think in the end of the 30s they will have a significant contribution thank you very much and that's not as far away as it might seem so let me just say thank you to all three of you for being with us here to talk about some of the big picture issues when we look at innovation and technological advances many thanks to you let us now drill deeper on advances in the nuclear reactor design and construction as was mentioned in our opening session and just now as well cost considerations can be a very daunting challenge for countries looking to expand nuclear's share innovative reactor designs improve efficiency, reduce waste and help maximize use of resources making the economics significantly more attractive so here to tell us more about new designs and technologies that hold the promise of boosting safety and efficiency is Yuri Komyakov he is chief scientific officer of Rosatom's pro-rev project which aims to create a new technological platform for advanced large reactors and he appears in video presentation Hello ladies and gentlemen I'm going to make a presentation on advanced large reactors with enhanced safety and efficiency for climate goals energy production continues to play a dominant role in total greenhouse gas emissions energy development scenarios show significant deterioration of the situation and the current course of its development current improvements of the situation meaning reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 3-4 times is possible with the transition to carbon free technologies in the scenario of sustainable development nuclear power certainly belongs to this class of technologies it is not only not inferior to renewable energy sources but also has a number of advantages that allow achieving a synergistic effect from the joint implementation of various types of carbon free technologies however a significant impact on decarbonization is possible only with the large-scale development of nuclear power at least 25% instead of the 10% that it has in the world today but this is possible only under the following conditions first qualitatively the level of security must be achieved excluding the repetition of such events as 3 mile island Chernobyl and Kushima second nuclear technologies should be economically competitive with both steam gas and renewable energy sources this can be done most rationally by improving large power thermal reactors and introducing fast reactors modern designs of new generation reactors have significantly higher safety and significantly reduce the likelihood of severe accidents the introduction of passive security systems should be noted as the main trend instead of relying on active components the emphasis is on natural forces, gravity, natural circulation compressed gases, selection of fire and explosion proof materials, nuclear safe design over the core for example in the AP-1000 project in the event of loss of electricity passive systems automatically shut down the reactor and maintain it in a safe state for 72 hours without human intervention in containment or in vessel devices for keeping the fuel meant melt significantly reduce the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere even in extremely unlikely severe accidents in prospective studies the use of accident tolerant fuel and or the abandonment of the use of zirconium alloys are assumed which makes it possible in principle to exclude the possibility of vapor zirconium reaction leading to the formation of hydrogen and explosions which took place in Fukushima it is important that the improvement in safety isn't accompanied by the simplification of the design of reactors which may decrease in the cost of building nuclear power plants Fukushima accident hit hard on the image of boiling water reactors but modern designs are capable of cooling the reactor in natural circulation mode without pumps Toshiba's design shows an extremely low probability of core damage and that a single ESWBR would eliminate more than 7.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year under U.S. conditions further development of single water reactors is envisaged in the fourth generation SCWR project measures to increase the efficiency up to 45% minimizing thermal emissions into the atmosphere should be noted also large-scale development of nuclear power is impossible without optimizing the consumption of natural uranium resources they're trying to solve this problem in this project of thermal reactor by increasing the breeding of secondary fuel however the cardinal solution to the problem of fuel resources lies in the field of fast reactors and closed nuclear fuel cycle the successful experience of operating large sodium cooled fast reactors BN600 and BN800 allows for the first time to approach the solution of the key problem of fast reactors which hinders their implementation ensuring their competitiveness in BN1200 project integral design eliminates the possibility of cooling loss and loss of core cooling similar to what happened at Fukushima also the design virtually eliminates the potential for sodium fires with radioactive sodium however to drastically exclude such a possibility lead cooled reactors are proposed they fully implement the principles of inherent safety including the use of equilibrium core which in principle excludes the possibility of an uncontrolled increase in power during reactivity accidents boiling of the coolant and a number of others inherent safety technologies incorporated in fast reactor projects exclude the need for evacuation and resettlement of the population in case of any accidents and exclude the repetition of situations similar to those in Fukushima or Chernobyl I would like to note that in Russia it is proposed to further develop the concept of inherent safety by expanding it to the closed nuclear fuel cycle facilities projects are already being developed to create not only individual nuclear power plants but also powerful industrial energy complexes including closed nuclear fuel cycle facilities for implementation in 2035 such power complexes provide technological basis for solving another major environmental problem reducing the radioecological risks of radioactive waste from nuclear power to the level determined by natural uranium raw materials analysis of modern and prospective projects show that advanced nuclear power reactors are the solution for generating safe secure and responsible base load electricity with no greenhouse gas emissions thank you for your attention and we'll have an opportunity a little bit later also to pose questions to Mr. Komyarkov now let us zero in or drill a bit deeper on innovative modular reactor designs as we heard a moment ago they can cut down both on construction times and on costs we'll be hearing from Rita Baranwal she serves as the assistant secretary for the office of nuclear energy in the U.S. Department of Energy leading its efforts to promote R&D on advanced nuclear energy systems here she is on video. Thank you Director General Grossi for the invitation to speak here today and I hope that nuclear energy is crucial to ensuring the sustainability of our environment now and into the future for the United States nuclear energy is the largest source of clean reliable and resilient electricity generating about 20% of the electricity in the United States and over 55% of the nation's clean energy in 2019 electricity that was generated by nuclear in the United States avoided the release of over 476 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere that's like taking 100 million cars off of the road many countries see nuclear energy as a means to meeting their energy demand and growth supporting their clean energy goals and providing energy diversity and security just like we do I'm confident that the U.S. nuclear energy technologies that we're developing can and will play a major role in providing the U.S. and the world with clean reliable energy for decades to come. I believe the nuclear industry is innovating now more than ever especially in the advanced reactor technology space here in the United States a diverse catalog of technology options are underway from micro reactors for small grids remote or islanded communities to SMRs to large reactors to meet baseload generation needs we have the right reactor for the application however there are challenges associated with nuclear energy that cannot be dismissed primarily it's high capital cost build time and limited options while many countries are successfully building new nuclear plants and seeing cost decline the U.S. has had a history of cost increases what some might call a reverse learning curve many of these challenges surround a first of a kind design and the decades long atrophy in our ability to build nuclear reactors the more we build and the more we exercise our domestic supply chain the more likely we are to see our learning curve head in the right direction the department is taking action to assure that there is a pipeline of new advanced reactors that will help to reestablish needed U.S. capabilities in the nuclear industry our new advanced reactor demonstration program or ARDP is a key element in rejuvenating our domestic nuclear capabilities this is a private public cost share arrangement that's designed to demonstrate two commercially competitive U.S.-based advanced reactor designs in the next five to seven years the advanced reactor demonstration program also provides support for the development of designs that are not quite ready for commercial deployment assuring that future generations of advanced reactor designs are available the advanced reactor demonstration program is expected to result in new nuclear designs that will help to increase the demand for nuclear energy for a broad range of applications including electrical power high quality process heating and integrated energy systems as these designs are developed we expect to see the fabrication and construction requirements of these designs drive improvements in the domestic supply chain as new manufacturing technologies are developed to meet the current and future demands for unique parts, components, and to do it better and at lower costs advances in manufacturing technologies including additive manufacturing, new joining techniques, modular construction and improved factory and field fabrication are all essential to the future of nuclear energy the department is making significant investments in advanced manufacturing with the goal of reducing the construction time of new nuclear plants by six months or more and reducing the cost of components for nuclear plants by at least 20%. This includes the department's investments in the transformational challenge reactor or TCR which will develop the technical basis to apply advanced manufacturing techniques and digital predictive analysis capabilities to deliver a new approach to nuclear designing qualification for advanced reactor technologies. The transformational challenge reactor program represents exactly the type of exciting leading edge advanced manufacturing R&D that is needed to accelerate innovation and reduce costs for advanced reactor designs in the future. The department's programs are already demonstrating the application of advanced manufacturing to produce high performance and high quality components through the manufacturing of sample parts of innovative advanced reactor designs. These new applications include advances in hot static pressing and joining techniques for large scale parts such as reactor vessels which are being demonstrated on a two-third scale, new scale small modular reactor vessel design as well as demonstrating the manufacture of a salt pump impeller for Kyro's powers new advanced reactor prototype through additive manufacturing. Another program that will have an impact on the development of advanced nuclear technologies in the US is the versatile test reactor. The versatile test reactor will provide a long-term source of fast spectrum neutrons to support accelerated development of fuels materials instruments and sensors. A unique feature of the design and construction of the VTR will be the use of unified digital engineering design tools and integrated requirements management systems effectively creating a digital twin that will greatly minimize the need for design changes during construction. Deploying all of these advanced technologies and revolutionizing the way that we think about nuclear energy is a lofty goal, but I am confident that working together we can address the design and construction challenges facing nuclear energy to meet a wide range of goals in a low carbon energy future. I look forward to a lively panel discussion. Thank you. And we will have that lively panel discussion in just about five, a little more than five minutes from now after the final presentation in this cluster and it explores how innovation in materials science from molten salt to liquid metals can also help drive sustainability. Our speaker is Hideki Kamide. He is chair of the policy group at the Generation 4 International Forum GIF which promotes international collaboration on next-generation nuclear technology. Guten Tag. Konbanwa. And good morning everyone. My talk here is molten salt reactors and other fast reactors for sustainability. For the sustainable use of nuclear, smaller burden for the environment is a key issue. As you know, because of the higher power density, nuclear has a large advantage for the construction footprint and the volume of the fuel and also waste. But we need to take care that disposal of high level radioactive waste. The left-hand side figure shows the nuclear reaction in LWL cycle. Fission reaction is mainly done by uranium-235 which comes from only 0.7% of natural uranium. In parallel, uranium-238 captures the neutron and converts to plutonium-239 and further to plutonium-240 and 241 and then amelstrom-241. The figure middle shows the time trend of LWL 60 of the nuclear waste. As you can see, plutonium is a main contributor but minor actions of amelstrom and q-ream are important for long time range. That is why fuel cycle and reprocessing are significant which separates plutonium and uranium and make reuse in the reactor. But minor action is, next theme is longer and stable use of energy. Renewable energy as solar panel and wind farm have eternal energy from sun but naturally they have daily and seasonality changes. The figure middle show life span of natural resources. Uranium resource has also limitation around 140 years comparable with fossil fuels. In order to use nuclear for longer time, the use of plutonium coming from the most part of the natural uranium is significant. Safety is the first for the use of nuclear. This hatched region in the map shows the evacuation area of Tepko Fukushima Daiichi FNPP accident. At this moment, 43,000 people live still apart from the home. We need to take care not only the accident but also significant influences on the society. This table shows goals of Generation 4 International Forum GIF. Safety, our goals of reactor development are very low likely output and the degree of reactor core damage and to eliminate the need for offsite emergency response like HF. Here you can see the several types of fast neutron reactors selected by GIF. The fast neutron can make fission of plutonium 240 and amersium 241. These are difficult for summer neutron in LWR. And also, number of neutrons in each fission contribute to conversion from uranium 238 to plutonium. The coolants in these reactors have relatively heavy nucleite and high boiling temperature. Sodium, lead and molten salt fuel. That is why the neutron energy is high and also coolants have no phase change including the Helmgast could reactor. This is good for safety. Let me start from molten salt reactor which can be set into the nuclear fuel cycle. MSR can help incinerate long-lived actinite plutonium and amersium from LWR spent fuel. This big graph shows more salt reactor schematic by Rosatom. In the fuel cycle, MSR can use and ban TRU nucleite of plutonium and actinite. MSR uses liquid circulating fuel like a fluoride salt here. This big graph shows the fuel reprocessing in molten salt first reactor MSFR by CNRS. The liquid fuel enables processing in situ during reactor operation. That means compact arrangement of reactor and fuel reprocessing unit is possible. Next is a sodium cooled first reactor. SFR can be combined with LWR fuel cycle for plutonium management. Left side diagram shows the closed fuel cycle case study in Japan. Several capacitive SFR are used to cycle the degraded plutonium including plutonium 240 from the spent fuel of LWR especially uranium plutonium mixed fuel MOX. The right hand side figure shows the amount of spent fuel waiting for the fuel reprocessing. By using SFR, the spent fuel can be reduced especially for spent MOXed fuel of LWR together with efficient use of plutonium. Here you can see safety feature of degraded removal in SFR. That is common to liquid metal cooled reactor. This figure shows the schematic of the cooling system of SFR. It is easy to keep the coolant level by simple guard vessel red color line in the figure. Because of no high pressure inside to push out the sodium even in an accident. Then natural circulation of coolant can work to remove the decay heat without any pump or external power. That is enhanced by large height difference between the core and air cooler of the final heat sink. The decay heat can be removed by a simple system. Next is safety of gas cooled first reactor which is high pressure system because of efficient cooling of helium gas. The decay heat removal system can use also natural circulation. In order to keep the coolant, a small guard vessel covers the primary system. The pressure in the guard vessel can be set higher in advance as a safety design option. That's all today's my talk. The details can be seen in GIF webinar for 6 reactor systems. Thank you very much for your attention. So we will now move on to a Q&A with those three members of the panel and I'll ask our technicians to get them back on screen and meanwhile I'll look around the room to see who might have a question for any of the three speakers we have just heard. Mr. Komnyakov, Ms. Barnwell, and also Mr. Hideki. Sorry, am I hearing someone over here? Okay, nobody in the room right now. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Again, a question to the last speaker. You talked shortly about gas cooled reactor, high temperature reactors which would be fit to produce hydrogen. You have a reactor in Japan since decades but there is not too much movement. What's the reason for it costs or loss of helium? Sorry. Today's my talk is about first neutron reactor so I speak about the gas cooled first reactor not the high temperature gas cooled reactor but gas cooled reactor and GFR can also use for high temperature utilization and it also contributes to the hydrogen production of course. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else for now in the room who has a question? Then I'll ask Jeff how it looks in terms of online questions. Thank you, Melinda. We have a few that have come through. Let's start on this one about fast reactors. I think it's for Yuri Komnyakov. The question is how can capital costs be lowered for fast reactors? What other factors besides those capital costs are hindering their deployment? Even though Russia has been successful in developing the BN 800 it doesn't seem that a customer has been found outside of Russia for this reactor. Why is that? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Today I am my speaker of Russia and I ask my colleague to translate the program to English. Okay. Why didn't I find the client of the BN 800? Okay. BN 800 was a project of the 90s of the last century. It was not supposed to be commercially acceptable or commercially deployed. BN 800 was built in Russia for only one reason. To master the technology of close to nuclear fuel side. And the new project BN 1200 this project is supposed to be commercially impacted, not the BN 800. It is being developed now. And many of the systems are being updated or upgraded or they are new and therefore they will allow it to achieve competitiveness. And we hope to achieve it in the next three years. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff. More questions from the online audience? Yes. There is also a question about molten salt reactors perhaps for the speaker from generation four. What is a deployment timeframe for SMRs? How can it be sped up? How can SMRs be financially competitive when nuclear power is facing such serious hurdles? In the international forum we have some road map of each reactor systems. And molten salt reactor is a new idea and there are some difficulties also at this moment. There are some collusion is a way have to overcome. But in case of the SMR reactor development, molten salt reactor and also the solid crude past reactor or the lead crude past reactor are also in our challenges. Now we are going to build such reactors at this moment. So I have to say we can go ahead such a development in these past neutral reactor including the molten salt reactor. You said also the financial issue. Financial issues are a bit difficult to say from the generation four international forum. But as Ms. Leiter said about that, such support from the government is also very important for the development of such innovative reactors. I understand. Thank you. Thanks and maybe I'll also ask Rita to weigh in on challenges involving challenges to adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques in the nuclear sector in general and also perhaps what the department of energy is doing about those challenges. Sure, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, great. So the department of energy is funding several research and development programs in the area of advanced manufacturing. Some of the examples include looking at the microstructural behavior of materials that have been laid down with additive manufacturing techniques, understanding the behavior out of a radiation and also if they're going to be put into a radiation atmosphere, understanding the behavior during and post irradiation. So those types of research activities are extremely valuable and definitely will be leveraged to start using products and components made using these techniques in actual reactors in the future. Thank you very much. Jeff, more questions from the online audience? I think that's about it for now. Okay, then just a couple more perhaps from my side, since we do have a few. Or do we have others in the room? Yes, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Alexander Bychkov, representative of state cooperation Rosatom, I have a question remark to Kamedi San. In his first slide, he demonstrated the resources of uranium. Of course it is connected to current nuclear power. Maybe he can highlight how long period could be used for nuclear power if we will apply closed fuel cycle, fast reactors and type reactors. Yes, thank you very much. The first neutral reactors can support the light-water reactor on the point of the kind of the disposal of the radioactive waste, but also the contribute to the longer use of the uranium or longer use of the nuclear power operation. As you said, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Other questions here in the room? At the moment? Okay, don't see anything in the room. Perhaps just one other question from me, and that is in regard to the private sector. And a question that I'll pose first of all to Kamedi San, but also to any other speaker who cares to weigh in on this. Many of the companies that you have mentioned, Hideki Kamadi, who are driving the innovative technologies that you described are private. In fact until now the nuclear industry has tended to rely on government support. Do you think the paradigm is shifting here? Will we see private capital begin to play a more important role? And what could be done to boost that? Well, we chief is kind of the national activity, not a private one. So it is not adequate for us to speak about the activity of the private company, but I have to say that such innovative development we need for the very speed up of the innovation is very important for the innovative activity. So the contribution of the private company, we think these are very important. And maybe it's coming from also the US with Rita San, who also said something. Thank you. Yes, I do want to put the same question to you, Rita, while you mentioned the importance of public-private partnerships, how do you see the role of the private sector in bringing advances forward? So what we have seen is that very much so the private industry is driving the innovation in this sector. Government is certainly willing to support and we continue to do that. But as you mentioned, there has been a paradigm shift. And what's very serendipitous at the moment is that we do see a lot of interest from venture capitalists, from angel investors, from philanthropists investing in the nuclear energy sector. And we certainly need to continue to leverage that and take advantage of it because the window of opportunity as we've talked about in this session is quite small. And so we're very grateful for that interest in private industry and we need to continue to run with it. Thanks very much. And I'll just look around the room one more time. Any other question here or from Jeff? Okay, then I will say thank you to our speakers for those very interesting presentations and also the discussion. And that brings this part of session one to an end. We are going to continue though after a break. This is our room disinfection break that we are required to take for reasons of health precautions. So I'm going to ask everybody to meet back here in exactly one hour. Also please to our online audience, don't go away, just take a little break. And we'll see everybody back here to continue our discussion on the role of innovation in the nuclear sector in one hour's time. That will be 3.30 Viennese time. And we'll go straight from that discussion into our final session of today. So don't want to miss that. Please come back. Thank you very much.