Overview of INPRO methodology

Presented by A. Korinny

IAEA/INPRO

INPRO Dialogue Forum on Roadmaps for a Transition to Globally Sustainable Nuclear Energy Systems

20 - 23 October 2015, Vienna, Austria

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Outline of presentation

• History of INPRO methodology

• Structure of INPRO methodology

• Summary of INPRO methodology areas

• Users, types and benefits of Nuclear Energy System

Assessments (NESA)

• Experience with NESA

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History of INPRO methodology

• 2000: Launching of the INPRO;

• 2001 – 2006: Development of the Methodology as a tool for Nuclear Energy System Assessment (NESA):

• Contribution by 150 experts (29 countries) and 50 IAEA staff.

• 2004 – 2008: Six national and one multinational NESA leading to several

collaborative projects;

• 2009 – 2011: NESA in Belarus (exemplary study);

• 2011 - : NESAs in Ukraine, Indonesia, Romania;

• 2012 - : INPRO methodology update project (two volumes are

published in 2014, one is expected in 4Q 2015);

• 2014 - : Limited scope NESA studies in China, India and Russia.

Scope of INPRO methodology

Nuclear power sustainability

issues (Brundtland report):

Nuclear accidents risks

Economics

Proliferation risks

Waste disposal

Health and environment

risks

Public acceptance

Sufficiency of national and

international institutions

INPRO assessment areas:

Safety of reactor

Safety of fuel cycle

Economics

Proliferation resistance

Waste management

Environment

Infrastructure

Physical Protection

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Nuclear accidents risks

Economics

Proliferation risks

Waste disposal

Health and environment

risks

Public acceptance

Sufficiency of national and

international institutions

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• Economics: competitiveness against alternatives available (in the

country);

• WM: managing waste so that humans and environment are protected and

undue burdens on future generations are avoided;

• Infrastructure: adequate infrastructure and effort to create / maintain it.

• PP: effective nuclear security regime;

• PR: unattractiveness for a nuclear weapon program by combination of

intrinsic features and extrinsic measures;

• Environment: impact of stressors must stay within performance envelope

of current NES. Resources sufficient to run NES until end of 21 century;

• Safety: superiority against safety of existing plants. Large off-site releases

should be prevented so that there is no need for evacuation*.

Main messages in areas of INPRO methodology

* - emergency preparedness and response remain a prudent

requirement

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Structure of INPRO requirements

Criteria: assessor’s

tools to check whether

user requirement has

been met

BP

UR

1

CR

1.1

UR

2

UR

N

CR

1.2

CR

…

CR

2.1 CR

…

CR

N.1

CR

…

User Requirements: what should be

done to meet goal defined in basic

principle

Basic Principles: goals for development of

sustainable NES

INPRO methodology sustainability metrics

• Sustainability assessment – not analysis (except area of economics);

• Sustainability measured in a given time frame – within a century:

• Linked to the lifecycle period of modern NPP and difficulty to make

projections on the technologies available over a century:

– e.g. costs of available alternative energy supply options will be different, fuel cycle

technologies may be different etc

• Except waste management and decommissioning.

• Types of INPRO sustainability criteria:

• Comparative performance on a metric with respect to technology used for

similar purpose (e.g., coal, natural gas);

• Progress toward improved metric within a technology lineage;

• Forward-looking target value of a metric;

• Yes or no answers on certain requirements and good practices.

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Scope of INPRO area of economics

• Cost competitiveness of power production:

• Dominated by costs of reactor construction, maintenance and operation;

• Involves costs of services from fuel cycle facilities.

• Attractiveness for investment (internal rate of return, net present value

etc.);

• Risk of investment (maturity of design and sensitivity studies);

• Flexibility of design;

• Economics issues in other areas of INPRO methodology:

• Financing of infrastructure (not NPP);

• Analysis of benefit to society;

• Cost-benefit analysis for national industry;

• Cost of waste management including disposal (estimation of assets being

accumulated now to cover expenditures in the future)

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Scope of INPRO area of infrastructure

• Legal and institutional infrastructure:

• Nuclear law, regulatory body and regulations

• Industrial and economic infrastructure:

• Financing of infrastructure and spin-off benefits:

• benefit to society (e.g. security of supply, avoidance of cost fluctuations,

minimisation of emissions, conservation of fossil resources, higher paid

jobs);

• cost-benefit analysis for national industry (licensing agreements, quality

assurance, training staff, increase of production, increased

competitiveness, higher skilled jobs)

• Size of nuclear facilities, support infrastructure and siting

• Political support and public acceptance;

• Human resources;

• Minimization of infrastructure and regional/international arrangements

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Scope of INPRO area of waste management

• Waste minimisation;

• Waste characterisation and classification;

• End states for all classes of radioactive waste, i.e. VLLW, VSLW, LLW,

ILW, HLW and spent fuel (when SF is not planned to be reprocessed):

• End state technology (including waste forms, packages and specific sites);

• Safety of end state (safety case);

• Schedule for achieving end state;

• Resources (funding, space, capacity etc)

• Pre-disposal waste management:

• Process descriptions that encompass the entire waste life cycle;

• Predisposal waste management safety;

• Time for waste form production

11 Scope of INPRO areas of depletion of resources

and environmental stressors

• Depletion of resources:

• Consistency with resource availability:

• Sufficiency of fissile/ fertile materials, other non-renewable materials and power

supply to NES;

• Efficient use of fissile/ fertile materials and other non-renewable materials

• Adequate net energy output (energy output should match the total energy

input within acceptably short period)

• Environmental stressors:

• Controllability of stressors (limitation):

• Radiation exposure to public and non-human biota;

• Impact of chemicals and other non-radiation stressors

• Reduction of environmental impact of radiation (total radiotoxicity);

• Optimisation of measures reducing environmental impact

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Scope of INPRO area of reactor safety

• Robustness of design for normal operation: • quality of operation and occupational doses;

• capability to inspect and frequencies of failures and AOO;

• Detection and interception of failures and AOO: • I&C, inherent characteristics, grace period and inertia;

• Design basis accidents: • Frequencies of DBAs and grace period;

• Engineered safety features, barriers and sub-criticality margins;

• Accidents with major release into containment: • Frequency of release into containment and consequences (dose);

• Robustness of containment, accident management and frequency of release into

environment*

• Independence of DID levels, inherent safety characteristics and passive

safety systems;

• Human factors: • operator errors in design analysis, formal human response models, safety culture

• R&D for innovations

* - level 5 of DID (emergency preparedness and

response) considered in the INPRO area of infrastructure

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Scope of INPRO area of fuel cycle safety

• Fuel cycle steps (facilities) considered:

• Uranium/ thorium mining and milling;

• Uranium/ thorium refining and conversion;

• Uranium enrichment;

• Fuel fabrication and transportation including re-fabrication of nuclear fuel

using fissile material from reprocessing;

• Spent nuclear fuel storage and transportation;

• Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing;

• Scope of consideration for every fuel cycle step (facility):

• DID levels 1 to 4* taking into account graded approach (stringency of

requirements is commensurate with risks);

• Independence of DID levels and inherent safety characteristics;

• Human factors;

• R&D for innovations

* - level 5 of DID (emergency preparedness and response)

considered in the INPRO area of infrastructure

INPRO Requirements and Output of NESA

INPRO User Requirements are directed at:

• Designer or developer of nuclear facilities;

• State (government institutions);

• Operator of nuclear facilities;

• National industry (involved in nuclear power program).

NESA’s output:

• Confirmation of sustainability of NES, or identification of gaps*;

• Definition of follow up actions to close gaps*;

• Note: Even if “gaps” are found, NES may be a good interim solution, if

path to sustainable system has been defined.

* “Gap” = INPRO Methodology Criterion not met.

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Users and types of NESA

• Different types of users perform NESA studies:

• Developer/ designer of nuclear technology;

• User (experienced) of nuclear technology;

• Newcomer (first time nuclear technology user).

• Type of user influences type (and benefit) of NESA

• Different levels of depth and scope in a NESA:

• NESA as learning tool: Increase of awareness of long term nuclear

issues (newcomer);

• NESA with limited scope: Selected areas and/or selected

components of NES (developer);

• Full scope NESA: All areas of INPRO methodology, full depth of

assessment, complete NES Judgement on sustainability

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Benefits of NESA

• Developer:

• Identification of critical issues, i.e. gaps to be closed;

• Balanced design, i.e. avoidance of undesirable consequences in one

area caused by development in another area and assistance in

selection of preferred option;

• Experienced user:

• Identification of gaps and follow-up actions to move NES towards

sustainability at early stage of deployment of additional units;

• Identification of advantages of different NES options and better

transparency in decision making;

• Newcomer :

• Increase of awareness of all nuclear issues and development of cadre

of knowledgeable individuals, i.e. educational tool;

• Assistance in strategic planning and decision making process.

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Experience with NESA in 2004-2008

• 1 multinational assessment (“Joint Study”):

• Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Republic of Korea,

Russian Federation, and Ukraine

• Development of NES of sodium cooled Fast Reactor with

Closed NFC

• Result documented in IAEA-TECDOC-1639 rev.1

• 6 national assessments:

• Argentina, Brazil, India, Republic of Korea as technology

developer;

• Armenia, and Ukraine as technology user.

• Results documented in IAEA-TECDOC-1636

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Experience with NESA:

NESA of Belarus (2009-2011)

• Full scope assessment of all INPRO methodology areas

published as IAEA-TECDOC -1716 (2013);

• Simplified NES consisting of power plant and waste

management facilities;

• Ca. 150 criteria and evaluation parameters assessed;

• 54% of criteria are met;

• 19% of criteria are met partly or conditionally (e.g. actions had

been planned and results were expected soon);

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• For 20% of criteria assessor could not

collect enough data to make a judgment

(recommendation was to collect necessary

input and to finalize assessment);

• 7% of criteria were not fulfilled (gaps

identified and follow-up actions defined).

Ongoing NESA studies

• Technology user’s NESAs on-going in Indonesia,

Ukraine and Romania;

• Technology developer’s NESAs:

• Limited scope NESA of 3 different SFR designs started in 2015:

• India: CFBR with MOX fuel;

• Russia: BN-1200 with nitride or MOX fuel;

• China: CFR-1000.

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Pictures taken from presentations: ‘Safety design criteria and design approach’ by Mr John Arul

(IGCAR, India); ‘Design features to enhance safety in CBR’ by Mr Raghupathy (IGCAR, India);

‘Introduction to safety characteristics of CFR1000’ by Mr Peng Yang (CIAE, China).

Conclusion

• INPRO methodology – the IAEA tool for sustainability assessment of

nuclear energy systems;

• Updated methodology will comprise 8 assessment areas and ca. 100

criteria;

• National trainings on the INPRO methodology application, examples of

INPRO assessments and other complementary materials are available

via NESA support package;

• Annual regional trainings organized by INPRO:

• 2014 – Latin America (Santiago, Chile);

• 2015 – Asia and Pacific (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia);

• 2016 – Africa (planned in Rabat, Morocco).

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…Thank you for your attention

a.korinny@iaea.org