Generation IV International Forum: A decade of progress through international cooperation

The Generation IV International Forum has marked significant progress in developing a next generation of reactor technologies that break out of the limitations of currently deployed nuclear energy systems. In slightly more than 10 years, the Forum down selected to the six most promising systems, forged a powerful framework for multilateral cooperation, organized itself into the necessary functional groups, created four overarching research objectives, established a dozen international projects, and completed hundreds of milestones. The Forum has focused research on viability and performance issues. A revised technology development roadmap completed in 2013 lays out the research agenda for the next decade. This paper summarizes the overall accomplishments of the Forum and the development status of the six advanced reactor systems. Accompanying papers describe the related research and development activities for each system.