As a strategic industry of China, the nuclear power industry follows an innovation-driven strategy and keeps on reforming and upgrading. By focusing on the power generation technology, China has developed a Generation-III pressurized water reactor technology independently and achieved breakthroughs in the fast reactor and the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor with the features of Generation- IV reactor technology. As a key member in the international ITER program, China has successfully promoted the Planning Package program and achieved the delivery plan, laying a solid foundation for the “thermal reactor-fast reactor and nuclear fusion” three-step strategy. On the basis of summarizing the development stages of nuclear power science and technology, this paper points out the development tendency and the technical direction for implementing the three-step strategy in the 13th Five Year Plan periods and, especially, how to realize the second step of “thermal reactor to fast reactor” and the third step of “fast reactor and nuclear fusion”. Finally, this paper gives a prospective for the future development of the nuclear power science and technology.

Since the nuclear safety culture was proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, China has committed to its construction and development. This paper reviews the process of the China nuclear safety culture development, dividing it into 3 stages as the preliminary exploration, the practice growth and the rapid development, focusing on the 30 years’achievements.The main directions of the future work for continuously promoting the nuclear safety culture building are suggested.

Nuclear safety is a major issue related to the national security. This paper reviews the development of nuclear safety technologies in China and other countries, focusing on 9 aspects, the legislation, the infrastructure, the international cooperation, the industrial policy and planning, the media, the supervision, the scientific research, the human resources and the enterprise. The paper systematically analyzes the achievements and problems encountered in the development process of China nuclear power industry and nuclear safety technology, and makes suggestions on the key issues.

The safe disposal of high level radioactive waste is a challenging task facing the scientific，technological and engineering communities. This paper reviews the latest progress of high level radioactive waste disposal programs，with focus on the progress in underground research laboratories, including the following key scientific issues: the precise prediction of the evolution of a repository site, the characteristics of deep geological environment, the behaviour of deep rock mass, groundwater and engineering materials under coupled conditions (intermediate to high temperature, geostress, hydraulic, chemical, biological and radiation process), the geochemical behaviour of transuranic radionuclides with low concentration and their migration with groundwater, and the safety assessment of the disposal system.

The basic concept, the origin and the progress of nuclear security are reviewed in this paper. The basic idea includes the nuclear security elements and the classification of measures. Then, the current states of the related regulations and technical work of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United States and China in the nuclear security field are discussed. The requirements in the nuclear security equipment selection, the system design and the construction are analyzed. In the last part, the challenges in the nuclear security area, like the cyber security, the anti-drone defense and the underwater defense, are discussed, together with several suggestions about the future nuclear security technology R&D directions.

This paper reviews the background and the development of the Environmental Sampling (ES) technique in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the major ES techniques and the major effort of the IAEA to strengthen the nuclear safeguards. The techiniques of detecting illegal nuclear activities are also discussed.

This paper reviews the threat of nuclear terrorism, the process of nuclear forensics, the nuclear forensics technology, and the nuclear attribution analysis, including the technical means, the analysis methods and the processes of the nuclear forensics as a weapon against illicit trafficking of nuclear materials. Some nuclear forensics challenges are pointed out.

The thermal discharge is the main characteristic emission of a nuclear power plant and its environmental impact is attracting more and more attention. This paper reviews the effects on the water environment and the aquatic organisms, and the current environmental assessment and management for the thermal discharge from nuclear power plants in China, focusing on the diffusion range, the monitoring, and the control and management of adverse effects. At the same time the practices of managing thermal discharge abroad are discussed. In view of the major problems in the present assessment and management, some effective control measures are suggested, including the investigation of ecological effects, the on-site monitoring, the optimizations of the water intake and drainage based on a full consideration of environment, the introduction of the standards on the emission and its evaluation, and the comprehensive utilization of thermal discharge.

The plume dispersion from mechanical ventilation cooling towers is an important issue in the environmental assessment of the essential service water system of an inland nuclear power plant, which affects the atmosphere environment around the mechanical ventilation cooling tower. Taking the nuclear power plant sites in Pengze, Jiangxi and Jingyu, Jilin as examples, this study simulates the plume dispersion from the mechanical ventilation cooling tower in different sites, for different cooling tower designs and in different layout scenarios by applying the SACTI model. The effects of different site environmental characteristics and different layouts on the plume dispersion are determined. It is shown that among different design scenarios of the mechanical ventilation cooling tower, the environment impact region of the plume dispersion for the case of four towers is larger than that for the case of two towers. the plume length of the former is 2.1 times of that of the latter and the plume height of the former is 1.3 times of that of the latter. Among different layout scenarios of the cooling tower, the linear layout and the parallel layout for the case of two towers mainly impact the distributions of the near field plume length and the high plume height. However, they impact the distributions of the far field plume length and the low plume height for the case of four towers. Among different nuclear power plant sites, the difference between the two sites is the largest for the case of two towers and it is the least for the case of four towers.

The environment is a big concern in the development of economy and society, especially, its pollution accompanied with the progress of science and technology. Therefore, the protection of environment becomes more and more an urgent task. The mechanism of the ionizing irradiation is discussed in this paper in the context of the protection of environment. The advantages and disadvantages of some common and new technologies of the ionizing irradiation are analyzed. The mechanism of the technology and its characteristics related with the waste disposal, the environmental protection and the personal health are reviewed.

This paper uses the CAirDos model to calculate the long-term air dispersion factor of a coastal nuclear power plant in Fujian Province, and the results are compared with those of the CEIRA model. It is shown that, with the two models, the maximum values are in the same direction, but the sub-maximum values are not. The second maximum value calculated by the CAirdos model corresponds to the downwind in the secondary prevailing wind direction(NE,10.4% ) at the 10 meters height, while that calculated by the CEIRA model corresponds to the downwind in the prevailing wind direction(N,16.5%) at the 80 meters height. One layer wind data are used in the CAirDos model to make sure that the wind direction in the high layer is consistent with that in the lower layer. The wind speed in the high layer is revised by the wind pofile in the low layer, so the wind direction is consistent with that in the low layer. In the CEIRA model, on the other hand, the wind data in the two layers are both used. When the wind directions in the two layers are inconsistent, the results of the long term atmospheric dispersion factor will be affected.

With the boost of both cutting-edge technologies and capital strength, the Virtual Reality(VR) makes a fast progress in recent years. And a technical maturity is reached for VR to be commercialized. With both the virtual reality and the 3D cinema, a stereoscopic display is generated based on the binocular parallax. But virtual reality provides more depth cues (e.g. the motion parallax) with a strong immersion than the 3D cinema. The current generation of the virtual reality still faces a series of technical problems. Especially, the vertigo and the eye fatigue are the toughest problems impeding the long-term applications of the VR. This paper briefly discusses the 3D visual perception and the causes of the vertigo and the eye fatigue. A solution to this technological bottleneck is suggested: the Dynamic Light Field. In addition, various light field technologies are compared related to the photograph and the display. At the end, three types of the augmented reality (AR) are presented and the commercial development trend of the AR and the VR are analyzed from perspectives of social interaction and communication.