New reactor prospects shorten long-term view

摘要

In the past couple of years, the growing momentum toward new reactor construction has had an ever greater influence on the content of nuclear-related conferences. At most meetings, this has tended to shift the focus away from the operation of existing reactors and toward the planning for reactors that do not yet exist. At the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP '08), there was also a shift toward these new reactor projects, but it had essentially the opposite effect on the meeting's contents. ICAPP papers frequently dwell on matters that are a decade or more away from being practicable (supercritical water reactors and the geometry of spherical fuel, for example), but the presentations on license application work and site preparation gave the meeting more of a real-world feel. The same presentations at a less visionary meeting might have seemed like a distraction from day-today reactor work.