Year
2021
Abstract
The International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO) was established in 2000 with the goal of ensuring a sustainable nuclear energy supply to help meet 21st century global energy needs. INPRO’s activities focus on the key concepts of global nuclear energy sustainability and the development of long-range nuclear energy strategies, so that nuclear energy is and remains available to meet national energy needs in interested IAEA Member States. Within the INPRO task “Global Scenarios” several collaborative projects have been implemented to support nuclear energy evolution scenario modelling and analysis, comparative evaluation of nuclear energy system alternatives and road mapping for enhanced nuclear energy sustainability. The valuable experience accumulated in these activities is now shared with Member States by providing them with education and training on the application of the methods and relevant software tools developed therein. This is achieved through a new INPRO service to Member States titled “Analysis Support for Enhanced Nuclear Energy Sustainability” (ASENES). This publication describes the purpose and scope of the INPRO ASENES service and highlights the linkage of this service to overall technical support to Member States for planning and development of nuclear energy. ASENES includes the following: MESSAGE-NES model for material flow analysis in complex nuclear energy systems representing different countries with different nuclear fuel cycles and nuclear reactors, allowing to model cooperation (nuclear trade) among countries at any stage(s) of the front-end and back-end nuclear fuel cycle; NEST tool for comparative economic evaluation of reactor and nuclear fuel cycle alternatives; KIND-ET tool for comparative evaluation of nuclear energy system and evolution scenario alternatives based on key indicators defined in variety of areas; and ROADMAPS-ET tool representing a structured approach for globally enhancing nuclear energy sustainability, providing models for international cooperation and framework for documenting actions, scope of work, and timeframes for specific efforts by particular stakeholders. The ASENES service is now part of the IAEA Learning Management System (LMS) in its e-learning course menu. As of the time of this paper, 63 participants from more than 19 IAEA Member States requested and received access to the INPRO ASENES e-learning course.