The Neopanora Philosophy

The Neopanora philosophy is shared by people of various professions who care about the survival and prosperity of our families, our communities and our planet, and would like to contribute to the sustainability of them all. We believe in the principles of fairness and equality. These principles guide our activities, which focus on helping disadvantaged people around the world.  The main approach we take in our contribution to global sustainability is the development and deployment of locally suitable and locally optimized sustainable energy systems. In regions that are not serviceable by centralized energy systems, these locally optimized energy systems can drive economic and social development, allowing further development that eventually allows the region’s economy to integrate with the global economy.

We call the locally suitable and locally optimized sustainable energy systems Sustainable Integrated Energy (SUSTINE) Systems. They are customized according to local needs, but generally consist of locally available renewable energies integrated with locally supportable NEOP systems, coupled with suitable energy storage or time-independent process heat utilization systems such as desalination and hydrogen production. As distributed energy systems that are locally optimized, SUSTINE systems from many regions are interconnected and integrated with centralized energy systems using smart-grid technology. This achieves very efficient energy utilization in the system overall.

We also believe in sharing our individual expertise and success through networking. We welcome people of all professions to join us and to help us reach our goals. Our approach centers on the development of sustainable energy systems, but we aim to improve sustainability in all three of its dimensions:

• economic sustainability
• environmental sustainability
• social sustainability

To accomplish this, we need to build a diverse network of professionals from a variety of industries.

Economically Sustainable Energy Systems

The current nuclear power technologies clearly demonstrate that nuclear energy is economically sustainable and suitable to those that can afford using them. However, the high cost of building and maintaining the current generation of nuclear energy systems puts them out of reach of emerging energy users.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, relatively small nuclear power plants with outputs in the range of 600 to 800 megawatts electrical (MWe) could produce electricity for less cost than coal, oil or hydro plants in the 200 to 400 MWe range. Following the Three Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl accident, many new regulations were imposed on the design and operation of nuclear power plants. Plants were modified with complex additional safety systems to meet these regulations and were subject to extensive analyses and testing to prove their safety. These modifications greatly increased the cost of producing electricity at the plants. The plants were designed to be bigger so they could produce more electricity and offset the increased cost, but the electricity was still more expensive to produce than before.

Today, most nuclear power plants are between 1000 and 2000 MWe in size. Because they are so large and complicated, they are very expensive to design and require a large amount of capital to build. Economically sustainable energy systems must accessible to emerging users, so they must be less expensive than the current generation.

When a wind or solar energy system is used alone as the basic and main source of energy in a community, it must be built with a capacity far greater than its average demand, and will therefore not be economical. This is because wind and sun are not always available in their maximum intensity in a given area. However, wind and solar energy systems can be made more economical when used as supplementary energy systems or their energy is utilized in a time-independent fashion.

One solution to this challenge is integrating locally accessible energy generation systems, using locally available renewable energy sources such as wind or solar, with nuclear energy systems. The size of these integrated systems must be appropriate for the size of the renewable energy system and to the local energy demands.This integrated approach allows energy to produced efficiently and economically. When the renewable energy system component generates more energy than is demanded, that energy should be stored in a suitable energy storage system, or used by industries or facilities that can use excess energy as it becomes available. This excess energy should also be loaded onto the electricity grid, if possible, to improve the overall efficiency of the system. With the use of smart-grid technology, the grid becomes a tool to harmonize energy supply and demand among distributed energy systems, instead of just a means to deliver energy that has been generated in a central location.

Another way to use resources more sustainability, reduce the risk of proliferation and, ultimately, improve the economics of nuclear energy is to supplement the use of uranium fuel with thorium. Thorium is more abundant than uranium. The thorium fuel cycle is also more proliferation-resistant than the uranium-plutonium fuel cycle. In the long term, the use of thorium can be more economical than uranium. For more information about thorium fuel, see the Thorium page.

The current generation of nuclear energy systems uses uranium as fuel exclusively. Only 0.7% of the uranium is fissile, or usable as fuel. There are several ways to improve resource sustainability in nuclear energy systems.

One way is to optimize the small amount of fissile uranium available by closing the uranium fuel cycle, so that new fissile material can be formed from the spent uranium. Although closing the fuel cycle would allow current nuclear energy systems to use resources more efficiently, it would complicate the systems even more and require even more infrastructure support and technical know-how. The new fissile material created, plutonium, is also a potential weapons material. Because of this proliferation concern, closing the fuel cycle is not an acceptable solution for many parts of the world.

Environmentally Sustainable Energy Systems

The fossil fuel that is currently supplying most of the world's energy is causing severe environmental damage. Renewable energies such as solar and wind, as well as nuclear energy systems, do not contribute to the Greenhouse Effect. Because of the issues related to long-term management of spent fuel, however, the overall environmental impact of nuclear power technology is a matter of debate. To improve the sustainability of nuclear energy systems, the issues surrounding long-term management of spent fuel must be resolved.

Thorium fuel as a supplement to uranium is a possible solution to many of the environmental concerns surrounding nuclear energy. Thorium is a more efficient fuel than uranium, since irradiation increases the amount of fissile material by several hundred times. Thorium also produces less spent fuel than uranium, and what it does produce has a shorter half-life.

The current generation of nuclear power plants act as centralized power centres, mainly due to their large size. The electricity they produce is distributed widely using a grid system. These plants could be used to produce heat for homes and factories as well as electricity, but because the grid served by each plant is so large, too much heat would be lost in distribution. NEOP systems are flexible in size and can be built in smaller units, so they have applications other than electricity generation.

Socially Sustainable Energy Systems

The area in which current nuclear technologies need the most improvement is in social sustainability. Social sustainability emphasizes equality among various groups of people, as well as democratic participation in decision-making processes. Only a small fraction of energy users--the large utilities with many expert personnel in developed countries, or governments in countries with established industrial infrastructures--can currently decide to have nuclear power plants built and operated. Nuclear energy is not yet an option to the emerging energy users who will become the majority of users in the coming decades.
The current generation of nuclear energy systems was developed at a time when the socio-technological development trend was characterized by standardization, centralization, economy-of-scale by size and corporation-driven production (Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave [1980] ).

Current nuclear energy systems are not consistent with today's worldwide socio-technological development trend, which is characterized by diversification, personalization/localization and technology democracy. Technology democracy can also be described as prosumerism, in which the design and production of a product is strongly influenced by general consumers.

Public acceptance of nuclear energy is another barrier that must be overcome. The special requirements imposed on the current designs of nuclear power plants, such as precautions for public evacuation following certain unlikely accidents, discourage the public's acceptance of the technology. The long-term management of the spent fuel from nuclear power plant is another public concern.

The limitations of the current nuclear energy systems are important to keep in mind because they will inform the design and attributes required of NEOP systems. NEOP systems are flexible and can be built in smaller sizes, as required by the customer, so they can be used to efficiently produce heat as well as electricity. In this way, nuclear energy systems could benefit emerging users in many ways, not just by supplying electricity.

NEOP systems will be friendlier, safer and more efficient than the current generation of nuclear energy systems, eliminating many of the concerns held by the public. This will encourage the public to accept and support nuclear energy technologies.

Coordinated international effort is needed to realize the potential of the current nuclear energy systems and to develop a new generation of systems that meets the needs of the emerging generation of consumers. We call this new breed of nuclear energy systems NEOP systems, where NEOP stands for Nuclear Energy of the Populace.

The Neopanora Institute-Network of Energy Technology (NINET) is uniquely structured to facilitate and incubate international collaborative effort in the development and deployment of nuclear energy systems such as the NEOP systems, and to deploy SUSTINE systems integrating locally available renewable energies and the new generation of nuclear energy systems.