Generation IV Nuclear Systems: State of the Art and Current Trends with Emphasis on Safety and Security Features

Abstract

Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1954, in the town of Obninsk, near Moscow in the former USSR, the first nuclear power plant was connected to an electricity grid to provide power. This was the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 MWe [1]. This first nuclear reactor was built twelve years after the occurrence of the first controlled fission reaction on December 2, 1942, at the Manhattan Engineering Dis‐ trict, in Chicago, Illinois, US. In 1955 the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear propelled submar‐ ine, equipped with a pressurized water reactor (PWR), was launched. The race for nuclear technology spanned several countries and soon commercial reactors, called first generation nuclear reactors, were built in the US (Shippingport, a 60 MWe PWR, operated 1957-1982, Dresden, a boiling water reactor, BWR, operated 1960-1978, and Fermi I, a fast breeder reac‐ tor, operated 1957-1972) and the United Kingdom (Magnox, a pressurized, carbon dioxide cooled, graphite-moderated reactor using natural uranium).