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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
Duk Jin Kim, Jong Hyun Kim, K. F. Barry, Ho-Young Kwak
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 3 | December 2011 | Pages 337-351
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A13312
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermoeconomic analysis was performed for high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) coupled with a steam methane reforming (SMR) plant in order to estimate the hydrogen production cost. Two possible HTGRs, a modified Brayton cycle HTGR (GT-HTGR) coupled with an SMR plant and a modified steam cycle HTGR (SC-HTGR) coupled with an SMR plant, were considered in this study. In these analyses, mass and energy conservation were applied strictly to each component of the system. Also, quantitative balances of the exergy and the exergetic cost for each component and for the whole system were carefully considered. The hydrogen production cost was estimated to be about $0.825/kg [$7.25/one million Btu (MM Btu)] for the GT-HTGR-SMR system and $0.728/kg ($6.41/MM Btu) for the ST-HTGR-SRM system with a uranium fuel cost of $8.40/MWh. The hydrogen production cost estimated in this study is considerably less than the economic target of $1.70/kg ($14.96/MM Btu), indicating that hydrogen production using HTGR with an SMR plant has great economic potential.