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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Vaibhav Yadav Jason K. Hansen, Shawn St. Germain (INL), Robby Christian (RPI)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 24-38
Economic or financial causes have led to closure or pending early retirement of several US nuclear reactors in the last five years. The published report “Economic and Market Challenges Facing the US Nuclear Commercial Fleet – Cost and Revenue Study” by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) identified 63 of the 79 studied nuclear power plants (NPP) lost money in the year 2016. The revenue-gap analysis (Figure 1) performed in the study also concluded that additional revenue is required to return most of these nuclear power units to profitable operations [1]. This can be achieved by reducing the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs that account for about 70% of the total operating expenditures for an NPP (Figure 2). There are many ways of reducing O&M costs; this work presents an innovative framework of reducing O&M costs by utilizing the onsite FLEX equipment at NPPs.