Programme

At our disposal is a spectrum of what I call the “rainbow energies” – hydropower, fossil (coal, oil and natural gas), nuclear, wind, solar, biofuel, and others (geothermal, ocean energy and marsh gas) – all of which generate pollution, in part due to geographic and economic factors.

Less-developed countries enjoy no energy at all or depend on the availability of resources. Most economically developed countries devise power-generation strategies according to resources or political policies. In Norway, 96% of electricity comes from hydropower, while in France, an advanced engineering nation that lacks natural resources, 80% of electric power comes from nuclear energy. Moreover, wealthier countries can afford to phase out nuclear energy, which is Germany’s plan.

But reducing or phasing out nuclear power is problematic. Before the earthquake and tsunami disabled the nuclear power plant in Fukushima 10 years ago, nuclear energy accounted for about 33% of Japan’s power consumption. Yet after Japan curtailed nuclear power usage in the aftermath of the accident, smog returned to Tokyo, electricity prices jumped, CO2 emissions goals were not met, and a trade deficit was recorded for the first time in 30 years.

Fear of nuclear power is embedded in many societies even though the safety record of nuclear plants is very strong and despite the health benefits. Studies by Kharecha and Hansen suggest that an average of 1.8 million air pollution-related deaths from fossil fuel burning were prevented between 1971 and 2009 through the use of nuclear energy, even when taking into consideration the world’s three major nuclear disasters.

Certainly, clean energies need to be developed. What is required is targeted R&D that explores a basket of research areas to balance energy development with national economic development, human needs, and environmental safety. We urgently need to innovate in battery and storage technologies and vigorously pursue Smart City applications and the One Health concept. Equally important areas include energy conversion efficiency and hydrogen energy and delivery; policy analysis and big data for added insight; transport systems and revamped building technologies; improved carbon capture, sequestration and conversion; and many more.

Ideally, we should eliminate all fossils fuels, but this is not practicable for now. For the time being, with nuclear power among the “rainbow energies” and the renewed global drive to develop various new technologies, including fusion energy, we can reach carbon emissions targets and sustain the health of the planet.

The “Energy Forum 2021: Clean energy, nuclear safety – 10 years after Fukushima” brings together experts from all over the world to reflect on energy issues that have evolved over the past decade since the nuclear accident in Japan in March 2011. The distinguished speakers at the Forum will share insights, know-how and experience in relation to the development of new technologies and approaches for a fresh and sustainable environment.

Delta Electronics, founded in 1971, is a global leader in power and energy management solutions and it has committed its corporate social responsibility to the nurturing of sustainable development. Mr. Bruce Cheng, the founder of Delta Electronics, highlights how innovation-based energy efficiency could contribute to a substantial reduction in mankind’s carbon footprint.

As a result of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Japanese utilities decided to face squarely the risks of nuclear power generation and started to improve their risk assessment and management capability. Risk-informed decision making (RIDM) has been pursued by American nuclear power utilities and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for several decades. It is widely accepted that RIDM has led to improved safety and more efficient operations.

RIDM is an approach to decision making in which insights from Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) are considered along with other engineering insights. Another important concept is that of performance-based operations, which focus on desired, measurable outcomes, rather than prescriptive processes, techniques or procedures.

PRA views the plant as an integrated system (hardware and human personnel) and answers three fundamental questions: what can go wrong, how likely it is, and what the consequences are if something goes wrong.

To answer these questions, thousands of potential accident sequences are investigated, and their likelihood is assessed. Two very important potential consequences of accidents are damage to the reactor core and the release of radioactivity from the reactor containment into the atmosphere. The risk metrics that correspond to these consequences are the core damage frequency and the conditional containment failure fraction. Both of these metrics are valuable communication tools regarding the safety of a plant. This communication is effective both among nuclear engineers and with the public. In particular, telling the public that a plant is safe because it meets the regulations is a rather obscure statement. Communicating the risk metrics is much more transparent and easier to understand.

This lecture will introduce the concept of RIDM and the activities of the NRRC to help Japanese utilities improve the infrastructure necessary for RIDM.

While c-Si appears untouchable as the leading PV mainstream technology for some time, many of the new applications that rely on flexibility, transparency, color management, integrability or simply elegant appearance require novel photovoltaic materials and technologies.

Organic photovoltaics (OPV) and perovskites, like other thin film PV technologies, are not yet part of this global TW scenario. The first printed PV products were launched in 2008 and 2009 for portable chargers, with efficiency of about 2%. Despite the rather low performance at the time, these first products already showed characteristic “OPV features”, like flexibility, transparency and color variability. Since then, the printed PV community has concentrated on developing novel material systems with higher efficiency, a development that has been outstandingly successful in the past 10 years. Organic solar modules with close to 13% efficiency were certified in 2020, and fully printed perovskite modules regularly reach 18% in our labs. Despite the great progress, printed PV products still face multiple challenges, including lifespan, cost and environmental concerns.

In this talk, we will discuss concepts and strategies to speed up the development of printed PV technologies to drive faster deployment. Automated, robot-based research lines with shared interfaces with multi-objective AI-based optimization routines are introduced as a powerful concept to accelerate the development and application of new materials.

Photovoltaic solar energy is certain to play a significant role in the primary generation of clean power for a sustainable future. There are many scenarios proposed that predict that up to 50% of all power generation capacity will come from photovoltaics (PV) by 2050. However, these all fall short of the necessity to reach these values far sooner and to be in a position of close to 100% power generation from renewable energy by 2050, if we want to remain within our remaining carbon budget . PV production capacity is growing at a substantial rate of about 25% per annum, year on year, but once again, in order to reach the growth levels required to supplant all traditional power generation in a timely manner, accelerated growth is required. The surest means to make PV deployment even more compelling than it is today is to enhance power-output per module, resulting in a consequential further reduction in the cost of electricity from solar power. For that purpose, metal halide perovskites hold the key, since not only do they produce extremely efficient PV cells, but they can also be layered on top of silicon in a so-called tandem cell to deliver new PV technology with fundamentally higher power conversion efficiency than today’s technologies could ever reach. I will present the technical breakthroughs that led to the discovery of this new PV technology and highlight the commercialization path to high-volume manufacturing.

Achieving the net-zero carbon emissions goal by 2050 for a sustainable environment is strongly dependent on targeted R&D and technological innovations that are cleverly designed in critical areas of clean energy. This talk will discuss synergies between solar-energy generation and innovative energy-saving applications for tackling the severe challenges posed by climate change to ensure a sustainable environment.

Organic and perovskite semiconductors are two types of non-conventional semiconductors that have immense potential for clean energy and a sustainable environment. For example, they can be used in printable solar cells for scalable solar energy, light-emitting diodes for displays and lighting, and electro-optics for low energy consumption and ultrafast information processing at internet and data centres. They possess several distinct advantages, such as comparable semiconducting properties with inorganic counterparts and easier processability, where low-temperature solution processing via high-throughput printing techniques, like spray coating, evaporation, inkjet printing, screen printing, blade coating, and slot die roll-to-roll (R2R) coating, can be used for manufacturing at scale. Their derived devices offer versatility in form factor for realising flexible, semi-transparent, and colour-tunability. These variants are pivotal for diverse applications in the energy, communications, aviation, military and medicine sectors. In this talk, current advances in these materials and devices will be reviewed in relation to their potential impact on creating affordable clean energy and a sustainable environment.

The accidents in the Ukrainian Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in 1986 and in the Fukushima Daiichi NPP in 2011 played a critical role in influencing the development of NPP safety activities. In this talk, the lessons from these two accidents will be divided into the following principles: (1) whether they resulted in the implementation of specific measures to improve the safety of specific activities (e.g. stress tests) or were associated with a change in the technical policy in the field of nuclear and radiation safety (e.g. the creation of lasting international IAEA, IEC or national standards and regulations); and (2) depending on the community, whether common lessons for different types of NPP systems or specific types of systems (e.g. instrumentation and control systems) were learned.

The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine will be described separately.

The Fukushima accident and the Chernobyl explosion shared a common cause: the lack of both a safety culture and vigilance to guard against severe accidents. Tokyo Electric Power Company did not appreciate the usefulness and significance of a PSA analysis, which would have warned about a deadly tsunami-initiated nuclear power plant (NPP) blackout. A complete accident analysis of an NPP helps the plant operator recognize the physical phenomena involved during a station blackout initiated by a severe accident and its likely consequences, with remedies associated with each scenario. Yet TEPCO chose to ignore such technical approaches of vital importance, while the rest of the world had adopted them and benefited from ensured safety as a result of these analyses. In contrast, a neighbor to Fukushima, the Onagawa NPP followed the opposite philosophy.

It performed a complete accident analysis and consequently took action to improve all the protective functions of the safety equipment accordingly. The Onagawa plant was therefore expected to be able to ride through the same tsunami safe and sound, and it did. In recent months, the Onagawa plant was ready for restart. One gauge for evaluating the safety culture in a nuclear facility is to examine how much the plant operator has exceeded the tasks required by the regulator. As the tsunami severely damaged the Fukushima plant and spared the Onagawa plant in 2011, in 2015, a sea wall to stop a tsunami 1,000 meters long by 29 meters high was completed at the Onagawa site. This serves as an indication of a mature safety culture in a nuclear utility company, demonstrated by their voluntary, expeditious and proactive construction of the sea wall. In contrast, the lack of a safety culture was demonstrated by the operators for the Chernobyl NPP, as they violated the operating procedure for personal gain. The deputy plant superintendent deliberately ignored all the alarms generated by the plant warning system expedite the test of safety equipment. While it is unlikely that the same circumstance would occur in today's political environment, the possibility of repeated instances has not been eliminated completely.

Accidents of this nature can be prevented only by establishing an independent regulatory organization with restricted requirements adhering to procedural protocols that must never be compromised by any local, societal or organizational circumstances. Furthermore, performing severe accident analysis and PSA evaluation of NPP performance and operating guidance for abnormal occurrences is critical for ensuring safety. These efforts follow the golden rule: Nuclear power is safe as long as you make it safe.

With the aim of improving the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) worldwide, the speaker will summarize the lessons learned following a thorough analysis of an accident and make specific proposals for improving the safety of NPPs. The speaker has been involved in investigating the causes of accidents and developing countermeasures for other NPPs in Japan as a member of the Committee for the Investigation of Nuclear Safety of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, and as an advisory meeting member of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) with regard to technical lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident.

In Unit 2 in the Fukushima Daiich NPS, the reactor core isolation cooling (RCIC) continued to function for about three days after the accident. Soon after the loss of RCIC water injection, the water level in the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) declined. The safety relief valve (SRV) was opened and sea water injection commenced. But the RPV pressure fluctuated because of water evaporation and metal-water reaction in the core. Drywell (DW) pressure increased from 400 kPa to 750 kPa (abs.), and a PCV top flange leak began through a silicon rubber O-ring, initiating severe contamination around the NPS. In the afternoon of March 15, wind blew toward the village of Lidate. The melted core relocated into the lower plenum, causing RPV bottom failure, and the PCV pressure and radiation level increased. The radiation level was measured by containment of atmospheric monitoring system (CAMS).

Based on the above lessons, in addition to the wet scrubbing pool with scrubber nozzles in FCVS, a silver zeolite filter that removes moisture with a mist separator made of metal fiber and removes radioactive methyl iodide using silver zeolite (a molecular sieve or AgX) was installed for the first time in Japan and the world. The thickness of the AgX filter is a very important parameter for obtaining enough decontamination factor (DF). Based on a TUV test result in Germany, the DF for the radioactive iodine exceeds 10,000 at bed depth (AgX filter thickness) greater than 75mm.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan (NRA) enforcement of the New Regulatory Requirements is based on the concept of "Defense-in-Depth", for Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors since July 8, 2013. It is hoped that the lessons learned from this accident will improve the safety of NPPs worldwide. In Japan, nine pressurized water reactors (PWRs) were restarted, but that was reduced to two because of delays in the construction of a specific facility to reinforce the NPPs in case of intentional aircraft attack. It snowed heavily in January this year, and the reserve margin of electricity in Japan fell to less than a few percent, just before the wide area blackout. We hope that the boiling water reactors (BWRs) will be restarted as soon as possible in addition to (PWRs).

On 11 March 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company was struck by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, followed by a tsunami. All onsite and offsite power was lost in the accident. Units 1 to 3 melted down because the core was uncovered for an extended period and a large amount of radionuclide was released. The accident demonstrated that the existing Emergency Operating Procedures and Severe Accident Management Guidance were not adequate for a prolonged station blackout (SBO) because resources required to perform critical procedures were unavailable or had become gradually exhausted. From the experience of the Fukushima accident, Ultimate Response Guidelines (URGs) were proposed by Taiwan Power Company (TPC) to mitigate a long-term SBO.

At the initiation of an SBO of a Light Water Reactor (LWR), core cooling is maintained by the turbine-driven water-injection system, e.g. the Reactor Core Isolation Cooling System of a Boiling Water Reactor or the Turbine Driven Auxiliary Feed Water System. These steam-driven engineered safety features will not function in the event of the depletion of the DC battery or water reserve. The URGs require emergency response staff to set up portable electric supplies and line up the injection paths of unconventional cooling water, such as sea water, almost immediately. According to the URGs, if necessary, the operators should depressurise the reactor coolant system to inject low-pressure water, and decayed heat is removed from the core and discharged into the environment via containment venting. The collective actions are called DIVing (Depressurising, Injection, and Venting) in the URGs. The purpose of the URGs is to prevent the cladding temperature from exceeding 815oC (1500oF), which is the temperature of initiation of a cladding breach and the release of volatile fission products from the fuel rods. The execution of DIVing damages the core by the injection of water from an unconventional water supply. However, it can keep the environment safe from contamination by a large amount of radionuclide and can avoid large-scale evacuations. The simulations of system thermal hydraulic codes demonstrate that DIVing provides an effective way to keep the core cooled in a prolonged SBO. The hardware, software and URG procedures have been implemented in all TPC nuclear power plants.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident released the largest quantity of radiocaesium into the terrestrial environment since the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The surrounding land, including forests, agricultural land, grassland, and urban areas, received 2.7 PBq of ¹³⁷Cs, resulting in radionuclides migrating through the soil and waterways. This Review discusses the deposition and distribution of radionuclides, especially ¹³⁷Cs, in the terrestrial environment resulting from the FDNPP accident. Anthropogenic activities in the upstream area and higher runoff and steeper channels from forested streams have led to a rapid decline in the activity concertation of ¹³⁷Cs of suspended sediment (SS) in rivers. These declines are the direct result of the dissolved ¹³⁷Cs concentration in the river water . We outline the environmental and anthropogenic factors that influenced the subsequent transport and impacts of radionuclides through the environment. The environmental aftermath of the accident in Fukushima was comparable to that of Chernobyl, but the intensive remediation activities in the Fukushima area and high rainfall explain the rapid reduction of exposed radioactivity in the environment in the Fukushima area compared to the areas surrounding Chernobyl. Finally, the need for long-term accessibility of data following the FDNPP accident and the scientific discoveries following the accident are highlighted.

Energy storage is very important for modern computation and communication, electrification of transportation, renewable energy, and secure electric infrastructure. Currently, Li-ion batteries are the most prominent candidates for energy storage, but other traditional technologies, such as pumped hydro and compressed air, offer much cheaper solutions if available. Large-scale deployment requires significant cost reductions in both capital and long-term operating costs. Many different approaches are being pursued for next-generation energy-storage materials and technologies, but most studies have been conducted at the materials and component levels. Among the different materials, Li metal is a key electrode material for developing high-energy batteries with a much higher specific energy and lower cost. Despite intensive efforts, significant challenges remain in the direct utilization of Li metal anode in realistic high-energy cells. This talk will summarize our current understanding of the scientific and technological challenges, discuss recent progress, and propose potential directions based on high-energy cell design, fabrication and testing. The fundamental relationship between the various components in the system, especially electrolytes, is explored at the cell level to inspire new ideas to effectively address the grand challenges in high energy and cost-effective solutions.

While the theoretical capacity of an electrode is determined by the bulk properties of the active materials, the various practical performance indices of the electrode, such as rate capability, cycle stability and safety, depend heavily on the conditions of the interface between the electrolyte and the active material. There are typically two ways to modify the properties of the interface. In the first, chemical additives are introduced into the electrolyte, and they are designed to undergo redox reactions on the surface of the active materials upon charge/discharge of a battery to form in-situ a so-called solid-electrode-interphase (SEI) layer for modifying the interfacial properties. With this method, a conformal surface coating can be formed on the “active surfaces” in a precise manner. The composition and structure, and thus the eventual functionality, of the SEI is determined by very complex and often unpredictable relations among the electrochemical properties of the additives and the parent electrolyte, and the charge-discharge protocols. In the other method, a permanent artificial SEI (ASEI) with designed compositions is applied onto the surfaces of the active materials. The composition and the structure of the ASEI can be pre-designed with an oriented function(s) for each of its components. The pre-design concept enables the selection of wide variety of chemical compositions containing different combinations of organic and inorganic materials. The ASEIs are typically designed to be inert to the redox reactions involved in the battery operation, so they are sustainable and not consumed along with cycling. Successful examples of using polymeric materials to modify various LIB anodes, including graphite, silicon and Li metal anodes, will be presented in the context of enhancement for rate capability and cycle stability, and a sustainable environment.

The development of energy-storage systems in the past year focused on improving energy density. While the progress has been remarkable, safety problems related to lithium ion batteries (LIB) have been intensively exposed. On one hand, LIB is not intrinsically safe with a very active anode, flammable electrolyte and an oxygen-releasing cathode; on the other hand, many application scenarios actually don’t require very high energy density.

We work on aqueous electrolyte batteries to achieve both high energy density and superior safety performance. We have shown how to activate the desired reversible I⁰/I⁺ redox at a potential of 0.99 V vs. SHE by electrolyte tailoring via F^-, Cl^- ions-containing salts. The electronegative F^- and Cl^- ions can stabilise the I⁺ during charging. In an aqueous Zn ion battery based on an optimized ZnCl₂ + KCl electrolyte with abundant Cl^-, I-terminated halogenated Ti₃C₂I₂ MXene cathode delivers two well-defined discharge plateaus at 1.65 V and 1.30 V, which is superior to all reported aqueous I₂-metal (Zn, Fe, Cu) counterparts. Together with 108% capacity enhancement, the high voltage output results in significant 231% energy density enhancement.

We also developed various approaches to stabilise the Zn anode. We accurately quantified the hydrogen evolution in Zn metal batteries by in-situ battery-gas chromatography-mass analysis. Then we proposed a vapor-solid method for a highly electronically insulating (0.11 mS×cm^-1) but high Zn²⁺ ion conductive (80.2 mS×cm^-1) ZnF₂ solid ion conductor with high Zn²⁺ transfer number (0.65) to isolate Zn metal from liquid electrolyte, which can not only prohibit over 99.2% parasitic hydrogen evolution reaction during cycling, but also guide uniform Zn electrodeposition. Meanwhile, the Zn@ZnF₂//Zn@ZnF₂ symmetric cell exhibits excellent stability over 2500 h (over 6,250 cycles) with 1 mAh×cm^-2 of Zn reversibly cycled at 5 mA×cm^-2, and stable cycling under ultrahigh current density and areal capacity (10 mA×cm^-2, 10 mAh×cm^-2) over 590 h (285 cycles), which far outperforms all reported Zn metal anode in aqueous systems. In light of the superior Zn@ZnF₂ anode, practical-level aqueous Zn@ZnF₂//MnO₂ batteries (~3.2 mAh×cm^-2) show remarkable cycling stability over 1,000 cycles with 93.63% capacity retained at ~100 % coulombic efficiency.

Delta has been a leading power supply company for decades, providing high-efficiency power equipment and smart energy management for a greener and smarter future. In recent years, Delta has developed energy-storage systems (ESS) for microgrid and virtual power plant (VPP) applications, which support power systems in variant situations in local areas. The power conditioning system (PCS) of ESS coordinates renewable energy sources or gen sets, such as gas engine/SOFC, via an energy management system (EMS). Delta’s V2X power converters, both on-board and stand-alone types, can also provide energy from EVs or store excessive energy from renewables or power grids. To keep telecommunications working during a power outage, a series of advanced telecom power units with energy storage were developed for distributed radio access networks (RANs). Delta will continue to develop innovative solutions for a greener and smarter future.

Our World is striving for an energy transition, in which electricity systems are challenged by deep decarbonization and concurrent increasing demand. In this transition to a deeply de-carbonized energy system, the electricity sector is expected to play a central role, with penetration in domains different from the traditional ones, such as e-mobility, digitalization, buildings and industries.

Most countries’ scenario-based projections and strategies focus on the expanded use of renewables. However, there are growing concerns about whether 1) renewable generation will grow sufficiently fast, 2) variable energy sources alone, depending on weather, daytime and season, will be adequate and sufficiently secure, and 3) the required infrastructure, including storage, upgraded grids and flexible backups, can be provided.

With the growing concern that renewables alone cannot shoulder the energy transition, diversification seems to be confirmed as a prudent principle, and arguments are being put forward for keeping the nuclear option open or even for expanding its use. Indeed, nuclear power is regarded as a promising asset for a decarbonized, more sustainable energy system. However, safety concerns remain a fundamental problem for public acceptance (along with some other unresolved issues, including the disposal of highly radioactive waste).

In this talk, I will address some research and development directions that are emerging in the areas of risk assessment and management, with a particular focus on their applications in nuclear systems. These include the use of simulation for accident scenario identification and exploration, the reliability assessment of passive systems, and the reliance on data for integrated dynamic and probabilistic safety assessment, for condition-based risk assessment, and for the safety and security assessment of cyber-physical systems.

Nuclear power plants (NPPs) are perceived by most of the general public as potentially dangerous and even to many people working in the nuclear sector. This is the reason multiple barriers and multi-stage protection systems are added to new NPP designs. As a result, NPP construction costs have risen significantly, resulting in reduced economic competitiveness of new NPPs and the avoidance of new plant construction in the US, Europe and Japan. However, it has been demonstrated by the long worldwide operation history of NPPs that the safety of NPPs is the highest among all power generation systems. There have been only 43 fatalities in all NPP accidents, all in the Chernobyl accident. No one died from radioactivity hazards in the Fukushima accident. There was no environmental damage from the Three Mile Island accident in the US, unlike the Fukushima case, thanks to robust reactor confinement. The impact of the Fukushima accident was not strong enough to ruin the Japanese economy. So the risks of NPPs are certainly exaggerated. The risks of storing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) are also severely exaggerated because SNFs can be sealed for about 300 years until the radioactive fission products decay. This can be determined by the low solubility of trans-uranic nuclides. These exaggerated risks are pointed out in this talk with evidence to gain more public acceptance by clearing the atmosphere around the fear of NPPs. The additional role of nuclear power to generate hydrogen by high temperature electrolysis is briefly introduced as a supplemental subject.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Accident had an immense adverse impact on Korea. It undermined public confidence in the safety of NPPs and the national nuclear regulatory system. Korea took immediate steps to tackle the public doubt . Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) announced 46 post-Fukushima action items to improve the safety of its NPPs, and 10 additional action items, most of which have been completed. The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) was established in 2011 as an independent regulatory body, separate from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which had previously covered both nuclear promotion and regulation.

The IERNet Integrated Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IERNet) of the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) measured environmental radiation levels at more than 100 locations in Korea during and after the accident, but there was no noticeable change in the environmental radiation level. Radiation measurements of sea water during and after the accident did not show any change either.

However, the psychological impact on the public was immense because of the vivid accident aftermath in the nearest country and the overlapping influence of the tsunami. Subsequently, Korean President Moon declared and executed a nuclear phase-out plan. Currently, KHNP is experiencing a harsh business environment with new anti-nuclear commissioners of the NSSC. Nevertheless, the Korean NPPs have maintained safety, which proves the safety of the Korean nuclear system.

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are an advanced high-temperature reactor concept built on MSR experiments in the 1960s. MSRs have several safety features, including operation at atmospheric pressure, and the use of high-temperature salts. There are several MSR designs currently under development in the U.S. TerraPower is developing a Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR). A solid fuel MSR design using high-temperature gas reactor pebble fuel, and a Fluoride Salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) using Flibe salt, is being developed by Kairos Power. MIT is sponsored by the Department of Energy and Kairos Power to perform several first-of-a-kind experiments at a prototypic temperature of 650°C to 700°C to study the irradiation effects of Flibe salt. The tests include assessing the corrosion and compatibility of proposed FHR materials, measuring fast neutron activation products, examining the partitioning of tritium, and testing tritium permeation coating materials. This presentation will provide an overview of the current status of MSR development in the U.S. and highlight several research findings from MIT Reactor irradiation experiments.

Seven years ago, at a Symposium on a New Type of Major Power Relationship in Beijing, it was recognized that there was a need and a great opportunity for cooperation between the West and the East to address global climate change and threats to human health. A workshop the following year examined the challenges and the potential for China–U.S. cooperation to overcome barriers to development and implementation of modern inherently safe nuclear power on the time scale needed to address the global climate emergency. Since then, as I will describe, the need to phase out fossil fuel carbon emissions has become even more urgent, and the essential role of nuclear power as a clean energy source with a small environmental footprint has become more obvious. Technical progress in nuclear technology has been made in recent years, but bilateral and multilateral cooperation is needed to achieve the potential of the technology to raise living standards while addressing climate and pollution issues expeditiously

Taiwan is aiming for 5.7 GW of installed offshore wind capacity from 600 turbines by 2025, and overall capacity of 15.5 GW by 2035 for carbon reduction and energy efficiency. Taiwan’s first operational offshore wind farm was the Formosa 1 Phase 1, whose two 4 MW wind turbines were officially commissioned in April 2017. Related research and talent development for wind farm development and supply chain localization have become urgent in Taiwan. This presentation introduces the current status and the planning of policy, industry development, research and talent cultivation for offshore wind power in Taiwan.

Hydrogen economics-related technology is considered one of the most important technologies in today's green and sustainable energy science. Our research work has focused on a wide range of nano-electrocatalysts for electrochemical conversion reactions related to hydrogen economics. Our group has established both experimental and computational strategies for the development of various aspects of advanced nanocatalysts. Our recent developments in advanced nanocatalysts for electrochemical conversion reactions, including hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), will be presented in this talk. Our work has led to a better understanding of electrochemical reaction mechanisms and to an improved ability to predict the properties of potential nanocatalysts.

The energy crisis is a broad and complex global topic. Natural resources such as gas and oil are limited in supply. The development of renewable resources is one of the most important technologies in the world. Currently, photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting devices under the irradiation of sunlight have received considerable attention for the production of renewable hydrogen from water. Solar energy conversion and storage through the photoelectrolysis of water using semiconductors as both light absorbers and energy converters to store solar energy in a simple chemical bond, H2, have become highly desirable approaches to solving the energy-shortage challenge.

We have focused on developing an efficient Si-based PEC water-splitting device. We introduced a surface-textured Si heterojunction PEC cell consisting of ultrathin amorphous Si/crystalline Si as efficient and robust photoelectrodes. The solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency has been improved to 13.26%, which is the highest-ever reported for Si-based photocathodes. Then, we designed a cascading energy band structure in Si via doping to facilitate carrier separation and novel electrode structures for 360° light harvesting for hydrogen generation with ultrahigh current densities of 61.2 mAcm-2. The cells were found to have an excellent hydrogen production rate. Our method can also significantly improve the stability of Si-based solar cells in water to sustain up to 300 hr. These multifunctional designs provide the potential for future development in the renewable-energy market.

Solar fuel production from photocatalytic reactions under visible light has been considered a potential alternative to make solar energy storable and transportable. Hydrogen generation from photocatalytic splitting of water and photocatalytic conversion of CO₂ into chemical fuels, like methane and methanol, are two good examples of solar fuel production assisted by solar energy. These reactions have great potential to simultaneously address the energy shortage and environmental issues by minimizing the usage of fossil fuels. A great number of photoactive semiconductors, such as oxide, nitride and sulphide, have attracted extensive attention because they are affordable and mostly non-toxic, and have considerable theoretical photocurrent density for fuel generation. The challenges in extending their capability in this application include extending the solar spectrum absorption, charge transportation, and the photo-stability of the materials. For example, TiO₂ absorbs only the UV wavelength, Cu₂O suffers from photocorrosion, and many others experience significant charge recombination processes. The introduction of nanostructures or secondary components into the parental semiconductor is a potential way to tackle these issues.

The main driving force for our research in the School of Energy and Environment at CityU is to improve (if not overcome) these shortfalls using several different electrochemical and chemical approaches. In this talk, I will share strategies for developing efficient oxide-based photocatalysts for the above-mentioned reactions.

In the 21^st century, the world faces the new challenge of drastically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases while simultaneously expanding access to energy and economic opportunity for billions of people. In a recent MIT study, we examined this challenge in the electricity sector, which has been widely identified as an early candidate for deep decarbonization. In most regions, meeting the projected electricity load in 2050 while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require a mix of electrical generation assets that is different from the current system. While a variety of low- or zero-carbon technologies can be employed in various combinations, our analysis shows that excluding nuclear energy as an option may significantly increase the cost of achieving the deep decarbonization targets. The least-costly portfolios in our analysis require an important share of nuclear power, and the magnitude of this share grows substantially as the cost of nuclear energy drops. Despite this promise, prospects for the expansion of nuclear energy remain decidedly dim in many parts of the world. We examined what is needed to reverse that trend and will present the salient findings from our analyses in this talk.

The nuclear industry, as it is presently configured, is inherently disadvantaged with respect to most other industrial sectors: it relies on large and costly machines, delivered by an inefficient construction sector, requiring a lengthy safety-driven licensing process, and producing grid-connected electrons (a near-zero-margin commodity). If advanced nuclear is to thrive in the 21st century, its development, demonstration and deployment paradigm must be completely reversed. Nuclear energy systems must become small and factory-fabricated, with inherent safety features that allow for rapid and efficient licensing, and possibly supplying energy products that command high added value in the market. In this talk we will focus on (1) Small Modular Reactors (<300 MW-class nuclear systems that could replace existing coal, NG and larger nuclear plants, while cogenerating heat and electricity for industry), and (2) Nuclear Batteries (<10 MW-class nuclear systems that fit in a standard shipping container, are ready for plug-and-play deployment, and require no refueling for 3 to 5 years). The opportunities afforded by these new technologies are potentially massive in markets as diverse as power, district heating, water desalination, containerized agriculture and pharmaceutical production, mobile manufacturing, ship propulsion, synfuel production, etc.

Taiwan has an independent electricity grid and very limited natural resources. To ensure energy security and a stable supply of electricity in Taiwan, nuclear energy has been used for more than 40 years, in addition to fossil fuel energy. Promoting nuclear energy has never been an easy task in Taiwan, and the Fukushima nuclear accident has made it even more difficult than ever. Perseverance in public communication and gaining public acceptance have become extremely challenging.

Ms Tsai, Ing-wen, of the Democratic Progress Party, was elected President of Taiwan in 2016, with an energy policy of a nuclear-free homeland. In view of a certain electricity shortage crisis in the future, a team of scientists, engineers and economists was formed to take action. A referendum proposal on repealing Paragraph 1 of Article 95 of the Electricity Act was submitted to the Central Election Commission. We won the referendum on November 24, 2018! Of particular note, the yes votes were all greater than the no votes in districts with nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, after a two-month full-scope evaluation, this government is determined to stick with the current energy policy.

To achieve the goal of increasing public acceptance, we will put more effort into general education of the public on nuclear safety, nuclear waste disposal, and correct radiation knowledge, we will continue to promote the concept of “going green with nuclear”, and we will strengthen international communication and information exchanges on general issues related to nuclear energy.

The CLP Group is an investor and operator in the Asia-Pacific energy sector. Its investments in Hong Kong, mainland China, India, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Australia span the energy supply chain. In addition to a diversified portfolio of generating assets that uses a wide range of fuels including coal, gas, nuclear and renewable sources, the Group has operations in the transmission, distribution and retail of energy, and offers smart energy services. In 2021, CLP is celebrating the 120th anniversary of its founding in Hong Kong with a commitment to continue to move forward with the community based on a shared vision of a better tomorrow.

Roger Chen’s talk will focus on CLP’s decarbonisation journey, which is guided by its Climate Vision 2050. CLP’s environmental performance in Hong Kong over the years, including the evolution of fuel mix and achievements in reducing emissions, will be discussed. Special focus will be on its nuclear journey in mainland China through investments in the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station and the Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station, and how nuclear energy contributes to reducing Hong Kong’s emissions.

Fusion power could be one of the sustainable options to replace fossil fuels as the world’s primary energy source. Fusion offers the potential of predictable, safe power with no carbon emissions, and fuel sources lasting for millions of years. However, it is notoriously difficult to achieve in a controlled, steady-state fashion. The most promising path is via magnetic confinement in a device called a tokamak. The world is uniting to deliver the largest-ever scientific collaboration, ITER, which aims to prove that fusion is possible on a commercial scale.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority has developed a wide range of skills to address many of the challenges associated with commercializing fusion energy production and hosts the JET device, presently the only magnetic fusion facility capable of operating with both fusion fuels, deuterium and tritium. Several major new UKAEA facilities have started operation, notably a new compact fusion device (MAST Upgrade), a major robotics facility (RACE), and a materials research facility (MRF). Most recently, work has started on the H3AT (Hydrogen-3 Advanced Technology) centre for tritium technology and a group of Fusion Technology Facilities (FTF). Finally, the UK also recently announced a £200M investment in the conceptual design phase of a compact fusion reactor, called STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production).

This talk will describe the international effort towards delivering fusion, consider the growing private sector, and address the key challenges on the path to delivering commercial fusion power. (OECD/NEA recommend)

Lithum-ion batteries have come from just an idea in 1972 to dominating electrochemical energy storage today. They are now in a position to enable the large-scale introduction of renewable energy, as well as electrifying transportation, which will create a cleaner and more sustainable environment for the next generation. There are ample scientific opportunities to further improve their performance and safety. Today’s cells attain only 25% of their theoretical value. However, as the energy density is increased, safety tends to be compromised. Examples include soft TiS₂ lattice, layered oxides, LiMO₂, and Li₂VOPO₄, a proof of concept for a two-electron transfer. These opportunities and the technical challenges that need to be overcome will be described in order to open up a discussion.