Identifying and Characterizing Candidate Areas for Siting New Nuclear Capacity in the United States
- ORNL
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) staff recently completed an internal 'Energy Assurance' study examining the key issues associated with the country's energy needs for the future focusing on generation sources, baseload options, transmission and distribution, reduction of greenhouse gases, and overall energy security issues. In examining the various generation sources including nuclear power and renewables, one principal finding was that 300 GW(e) of new nuclear electrical generating capacity would be needed by 2050. With that need, the initial, obvious question is can 300 GW(e) of nuclear capacity be sited in the United States? In an attempt to address that question as well as others, ORNL initiated a 'National Electric Generation Siting Study,' which is to be a multiphase study to address several key questions related to our national electrical energy supply. The initial phase of this study is to examine the nuclear option. This paper summarizes the approach developed for screening sites, the methodology employed that includes spatial modeling, and preliminary results using the southeast United States to demonstrate the usefulness of the overall approach as a test case.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 970478
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2009 ANS Winter Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, USA, 20091115, 20091119
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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