title: Nuclear power

text: The main constituent of spent fuel from LWRs is slightly enriched uranium. This can be recycled into reprocessed uranium (RepU), which can be used in a fast reactor, used directly as fuel in CANDU reactors, or re-enriched for another cycle through an LWR.


title: Nuclear power

text: Reprocessing has the potential to recover up to 95% of the uranium and plutonium fuel in spent nuclear fuel, as well as reduce long-term radioactivity within the remaining waste.


title: Nuclear power

text: However, reprocessing has been politically controversial because of the potential for nuclear proliferation and varied perceptions of increasing the vulnerability to nuclear terrorism. Reprocessing also leads to higher fuel cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle.


title: Nuclear power

text: While reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level waste, it does not reduce the fission products that are the primary causes of residual heat generation and radioactivity for the first few centuries outside the reactor. Thus, reprocessed waste still requires an almost identical treatment for the initial first few hundred years.


title: Nuclear power

text: Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done in France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, and India. In the United States, spent nuclear fuel is currently not reprocessed.


title: Nuclear power

text: The La Hague reprocessing facility in France has operated commercially since 1976 and is responsible for half the world's reprocessing as of 2010. It produces MOX fuel from spent fuel derived from several countries. More than 32,000 tonnes of spent fuel had been reprocessed as of 2015, with the majority from France, 17% from Germany, and 9% from Japan.


title: Nuclear power

text: Breeding is the process of converting non-fissile material into fissile material that can be used as nuclear fuel. The non-fissile material that can be used for this process is called fertile material, and constitute the vast majority of current nuclear waste.


title: Nuclear power

text: This breeding process occurs naturally in breeder reactors. As opposed to light water thermal-neutron reactors, which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast-neutron breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium) or thorium.


title: Nuclear power

text: A number of fuel cycles and breeder reactor combinations are considered to be sustainable or renewable sources of energy. In 2006 it was estimated that with seawater extraction, there was likely five billion years' worth of uranium resources for use in breeder reactors.


title: Nuclear power

text: Breeder technology has been used in several reactors, but as of 2006, the high cost of reprocessing fuel safely requires uranium prices of more than US$200/kg before becoming justified economically.


title: Nuclear power

text: Breeder reactors are however being developed for their potential to burn up all of the actinides (the most active and dangerous components) in the present inventory of nuclear waste, while also producing power and creating additional quantities of fuel for more reactors via the breeding process.


title: Nuclear power

text: As of 2017, there are two breeders producing commercial power, BN-600 reactor and the BN-800 reactor, both in Russia.


title: Nuclear power

text: Both China and India are building breeder reactors. The Indian 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is in the commissioning phase, with plans to build more.


title: Nuclear power

text: Another alternative to fast-neutron breeders are thermal-neutron breeder reactors that use uranium-233 bred from thorium as fission fuel in the thorium fuel cycle. Thorium is about 3.5 times more common than uranium in the Earth's crust, and has different geographic characteristics. India's three-stage nuclear power programme features the use of a thorium fuel cycle in the third stage, as it has abundant thorium reserves but little uranium.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear decommissioning is the process of dismantling a nuclear facility to the point that it no longer requires measures for radiation protection, returning the facility and its parts to a safe enough level to be entrusted for other uses.


title: Nuclear power

text: Due to the presence of radioactive materials, nuclear decommissioning presents technical and economic challenges.


title: Nuclear power

text: The costs of decommissioning are generally spread over the lifetime of a facility and saved in a decommissioning fund.


title: Nuclear power

text: Civilian nuclear power supplied 2,586 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2019, equivalent to about 10% of global electricity generation, and was the second largest low-carbon power source after hydroelectricity.


title: Nuclear power

text: Since electricity accounts for about 25% of world energy consumption, nuclear power's contribution to global energy was about 2.5% in 2011.


title: Nuclear power

text: This is a little more than the combined global electricity production from wind, solar, biomass and geothermal power, which together provided 2% of global final energy consumption in 2014.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power's share of global electricity production has fallen from 16.5% in 1997, in large part because the economics of nuclear power have become more difficult.


title: Nuclear power

text: The United States has the largest fleet of nuclear reactors, generating over 800TWh per year with an average capacity factor of 92%. Most reactors under construction are generation III reactors in Asia.


title: Nuclear power

text: Regional differences in the use of nuclear power are large. The United States produces the most nuclear energy in the world, with nuclear power providing 20% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors71% in 2019.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power is the single largest low-carbon electricity source in the United States, and accounts for two-thirds of the European Union's low-carbon electricity.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear energy policy differs among European Union countries, and some, such as Austria, Estonia, Ireland and Italy, have no active nuclear power stations.


title: Nuclear power

text: In addition, there were approximately 140 naval vessels using nuclear propulsion in operation, powered by about 180 reactors.


title: Nuclear power

text: International research is continuing into additional uses of process heat such as hydrogen production (in support of a hydrogen economy), for desalinating sea water, and for use in district heating systems.


title: Nuclear power

text: The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject and multi-billion-dollar investments depend on the choice of energy sources. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant. For this reason, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants. Fuel costs account for about 30 percent of the operating costs, while prices are subject to the market.


title: Nuclear power

text: The high cost of construction is one of the biggest challenges for nuclear power plants. A new 1,100MW plant is estimated to cost between $6 billion to $9 billion. Nuclear power cost trends show large disparity by nation, design, build rate and the establishment of familiarity in expertise. The only two nations for which data is available that saw cost decreases in the 2000s were India and South Korea.


title: Nuclear power

text: Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must also take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties.


title: Nuclear power

text: As of 2010, all operating nuclear power plants have been developed by state-owned or regulated electric utility monopolies.


title: Nuclear power

text: Many countries have since liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.


title: Nuclear power

text: The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from a new nuclear power plant is estimated to be 69USD/MWh, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. This represents the median cost estimate for an nth-of-a-kind nuclear power plant to be completed in 2025, at a discount rate of 7%. Nuclear power was found to be the least-cost option among dispatchable technologies. Variable renewables can generate cheaper electricity: the median cost of onshore wind power was estimated to be 50USD/MWh, and utility-scale solar power 56USD/MWh.


title: Nuclear power

text: At the assumed CO emission cost of 30USD/ton, power from coal (88USD/MWh) and gas (71USD/MWh) is more expensive than low-carbon technologies.


title: Nuclear power

text: Electricity from long-term operation of nuclear power plants by lifetime extension was found the be the least-cost option, at 32USD/MWh.


title: Nuclear power

text: Measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power. Extreme weather events, including events made more severe by climate change, are decreasing all energy source reliability including nuclear energy by a small degree, depending on location siting.


title: Nuclear power

text: New small modular reactors, such as those developed by NuScale Power, are aimed at reducing the investment costs for new construction by making the reactors smaller and modular, so that they can be built in a factory.


title: Nuclear power

text: Certain designs had considerable early positive economics, such as the CANDU, which realized much higher capacity factor and reliability when compared to generation II light water reactors up to the 1990s.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power plants, though capable of some grid-load following, are typically run as much as possible to keep the cost of the generated electrical energy as low as possible, supplying mostly base-load electricity.


title: Nuclear power

text: Due to the on-line refueling reactor design, PHWRs (of which the CANDU design is a part) continue to hold many world record positions for longest continual electricity generation, often over 800 days.


title: Nuclear power

text: The specific record as of 2019 is held by a PHWR at Kaiga Atomic Power Station, generating electricity continuously for 962 days.


title: Nuclear power

text: Costs not considered in LCOE calculations include funds for research and development, and disasters (the Fukushima disaster is estimated to cost taxpayers ≈$187 billion). Governments were found to in some cases force "consumers to pay upfront for potential cost overruns" or subsidize uneconomic nuclear energy or be required to do so. Nuclear operators are liable to pay for the waste management in the EU. In the U.S. the Congress reportedly decided 40 years ago that the nation, and not private companies, would be responsible for storing radioactive waste with taxpayers paying for the costs. The World Nuclear Waste Report 2019 found that "even in countries in which the polluter-pays-principle is a legal requirement, it is applied incompletely" and notes the case of the German Asse II deep geological disposal facility, where the retrieval of large amounts of waste has to be paid for by taxpayers. Similarly, other forms of energy, including fossil fuels and renewables, have a portion of their costs covered by governments.


title: Nuclear power

text: The most common use of nuclear power in space is the use of radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which use radioactive decay to generate power.


title: Nuclear power

text: These power generators are relatively small scale (few kW), and they are mostly used to power space missions and experiments for long periods where solar power is not available in sufficient quantity, such as in the "Voyager 2" space probe.


title: Nuclear power

text: A few space vehicles have been launched using nuclear reactors: 34 reactors belong to the Soviet RORSAT series and one was the American SNAP-10A.


title: Nuclear power

text: Both fission and fusion appear promising for space propulsion applications, generating higher mission velocities with less reaction mass.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power plants have three unique characteristics that affect their safety, as compared to other power plants.


title: Nuclear power

text: Firstly, intensely radioactive materials are present in a nuclear reactor. Their release to the environment could be hazardous.


title: Nuclear power

text: Secondly, the fission products, which make up most of the intensely radioactive substances in the reactor, continue to generate a significant amount of decay heat even after the fission chain reaction has stopped. If the heat cannot be removed from the reactor, the fuel rods may overheat and release radioactive materials.


title: Nuclear power

text: Thirdly, a criticality accident (a rapid increase of the reactor power) is possible in certain reactor designs if the chain reaction cannot be controlled.


title: Nuclear power

text: All modern reactors are designed so that an uncontrolled increase of the reactor power is prevented by natural feedback mechanisms, a concept known as negative void coefficient of reactivity. If the temperature or the amount of steam in the reactor increases, the fission rate inherently decreases. The chain reaction can also be manually stopped by inserting control rods into the reactor core. Emergency core cooling systems (ECCS) can remove the decay heat from the reactor if normal cooling systems fail. If the ECCS fails, multiple physical barriers limit the release of radioactive materials to the environment even in the case of an accident. The last physical barrier is the large containment building.


title: Nuclear power

text: With a death rate of 0.07 per TWh, nuclear power is the safest energy source per unit of energy generated in terms of mortality when the historical track-record is considered.


title: Nuclear power

text: Energy produced by coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydropower has caused more deaths per unit of energy generated due to air pollution and energy accidents.


title: Nuclear power

text: This is found when comparing the immediate deaths from other energy sources to both the immediate and the latent, or predicted, indirect cancer deaths from nuclear energy accidents.


title: Nuclear power

text: When the direct and indirect fatalities (including fatalities resulting from the mining and air pollution) from nuclear power and fossil fuels are compared, the use of nuclear power has been calculated to have prevented about 1.84 million deaths from air pollution between 1971 and 2009, by reducing the proportion of energy that would otherwise have been generated by fossil fuels.


title: Nuclear power

text: Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life.


title: Nuclear power

text: Serious impacts of nuclear accidents are often not directly attributable to radiation exposure, but rather social and psychological effects. Evacuation and long-term displacement of affected populations created problems for many people, especially the elderly and hospital patients.


title: Nuclear power

text: Forced evacuation from a nuclear accident may lead to social isolation, anxiety, depression, psychosomatic medical problems, reckless behavior, and suicide.


title: Nuclear power

text: A comprehensive 2005 study on the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster concluded that the mental health impact is the largest public health problem caused by the accident.


title: Nuclear power

text: Frank N. von Hippel, an American scientist, commented that a disproportionate fear of ionizing radiation (radiophobia) could have long-term psychological effects on the population of contaminated areas following the Fukushima disaster.


title: Nuclear power

text: Some serious nuclear and radiation accidents have occurred. The severity of nuclear accidents is generally classified using the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).


title: Nuclear power

text: The scale ranks anomalous events or accidents on a scale from 0 (a deviation from normal operation that poses no safety risk) to 7 (a major accident with widespread effects).


title: Nuclear power

text: There have been three accidents of level 5 or higher in the civilian nuclear power industry, two of which, the Chernobyl accident and the Fukushima accident, are ranked at level 7.


title: Nuclear power

text: The first major nuclear accidents were the Kyshtym disaster in the Soviet Union and the Windscale fire in the United Kingdom, both in 1957. The first major accident at a nuclear reactor in the USA occurred in 1961 at the SL-1, a U.S. Army experimental nuclear power reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. An uncontrolled chain reaction resulted in a steam explosion which killed the three crew members and caused a meltdown.


title: Nuclear power

text: Another serious accident happened in 1968, when one of the two liquid-metal-cooled reactors on board the underwent a fuel element failure, with the emission of gaseous fission products into the surrounding air, resulting in 9 crew fatalities and 83 injuries.


title: Nuclear power

text: The accident has not caused any radiation-related deaths but resulted in radioactive contamination of surrounding areas. The difficult cleanup operation is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars over 40 or more years.


title: Nuclear power

text: The impact of nuclear accidents is controversial. According to Benjamin K. Sovacool, fission energy accidents ranked first among energy sources in terms of their total economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage attributed to energy accidents. Another analysis found that coal, oil, liquid petroleum gas and hydroelectric accidents (primarily due to the Banqiao Dam disaster) have resulted in greater economic impacts than nuclear power accidents. The study compares latent cancer deaths attributable to nuclear with immediate deaths from other energy sources per unit of energy generated, and does not include fossil fuel related cancer and other indirect deaths created by the use of fossil fuel consumption in its "severe accident" (an accident with more than five fatalities) classification. The Chernobyl accident in 1986 caused approximately 50 deaths from direct and indirect effects, and some temporary serious injuries from acute radiation syndrome. The future predicted mortality from increases in cancer rates is estimated at 4000 in the decades to come. However, the costs have been large and are increasing.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power works under an insurance framework that limits or structures accident liabilities in accordance with national and international conventions.


title: Nuclear power

text: It is often argued that this potential shortfall in liability represents an external cost not included in the cost of nuclear electricity. This cost is small, amounting to about 0.1% of the levelized cost of electricity, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office in the United States.


title: Nuclear power

text: These beyond-regular insurance costs for worst-case scenarios are not unique to nuclear power. Hydroelectric power plants are similarly not fully insured against a catastrophic event such as dam failures. For example, the failure of the Banqiao Dam caused the death of an estimated 30,000 to 200,000 people, and 11 million people lost their homes. As private insurers base dam insurance premiums on limited scenarios, major disaster insurance in this sector is likewise provided by the state.


title: Nuclear power

text: Terrorists could target nuclear power plants in an attempt to release radioactive contamination into the community. The United States 9/11 Commission has said that nuclear power plants were potential targets originally considered for the September 11, 2001 attacks. An attack on a reactor's spent fuel pool could also be serious, as these pools are less protected than the reactor core. The release of radioactivity could lead to thousands of near-term deaths and greater numbers of long-term fatalities.


title: Nuclear power

text: In the United States, the NRC carries out "Force on Force" (FOF) exercises at all nuclear power plant sites at least once every three years.


title: Nuclear power

text: In the United States, plants are surrounded by a double row of tall fences which are electronically monitored.


title: Nuclear power

text: Successful insider crimes depended on the perpetrators' observation and knowledge of security vulnerabilities.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-related nuclear technology to states that do not already possess nuclear weapons. Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can also be used to make nuclear weapons. For this reason, nuclear power presents proliferation risks.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power program can become a route leading to a nuclear weapon. An example of this is the concern over Iran's nuclear program.


title: Nuclear power

text: The re-purposing of civilian nuclear industries for military purposes would be a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which 190 countries adhere.


title: Nuclear power

text: As of April 2012, there are thirty one countries that have civil nuclear power plants, of which nine have nuclear weapons. The vast majority of these nuclear weapons states have produced weapons before commercial nuclear power stations.


title: Nuclear power

text: A fundamental goal for global security is to minimize the nuclear proliferation risks associated with the expansion of nuclear power.


title: Nuclear power

text: The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership was an international effort to create a distribution network in which developing countries in need of energy would receive nuclear fuel at a discounted rate, in exchange for that nation agreeing to forgo their own indigenous development of a uranium enrichment program.


title: Nuclear power

text: The France-based Eurodif/"European Gaseous Diffusion Uranium Enrichment Consortium" is a program that successfully implemented this concept, with Spain and other countries without enrichment facilities buying a share of the fuel produced at the French-controlled enrichment facility, but without a transfer of technology.


title: Nuclear power

text: the revival of interest in nuclear power could result in the worldwide dissemination of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies, which present obvious risks of proliferation as these technologies can produce fissile materials that are directly usable in nuclear weapons.


title: Nuclear power

text: On the other hand, power reactors can also reduce nuclear weapons arsenals when military-grade nuclear materials are reprocessed to be used as fuel in nuclear power plants.


title: Nuclear power

text: The Megatons to Megawatts Program is considered the single most successful non-proliferation program to date.


title: Nuclear power

text: Up to 2005, the program had processed $8 billion of high enriched, weapons-grade uranium into low enriched uranium suitable as nuclear fuel for commercial fission reactors by diluting it with natural uranium.


title: Nuclear power

text: For approximately two decades, this material generated nearly 10 percent of all the electricity consumed in the United States, or about half of all U.S. nuclear electricity, with a total of around 7,000TWh of electricity produced.


title: Nuclear power

text: In total it is estimated to have cost $17 billion, a "bargain for US ratepayers", with Russia profiting $12 billion from the deal. Much needed profit for the Russian nuclear oversight industry, which after the collapse of the Soviet economy, had difficulties paying for the maintenance and security of the Russian Federations highly enriched uranium and warheads.


title: Nuclear power

text: The Megatons to Megawatts Program was hailed as a major success by anti-nuclear weapon advocates as it has largely been the driving force behind the sharp reduction in the number of nuclear weapons worldwide since the cold war ended.


title: Nuclear power

text: However, without an increase in nuclear reactors and greater demand for fissile fuel, the cost of dismantling and down blending has dissuaded Russia from continuing their disarmament.


title: Nuclear power

text: Being a low-carbon energy source with relatively little land-use requirements, nuclear energy can have a positive environmental impact. It also requires a constant supply of significant amounts of water and affects the environment through mining and milling.<ref name="10.3390/ijerph13070700"></ref> Its largest potential negative impacts on the environment may arise from its transgenerational risks for nuclear weapons proliferation that may increase risks of their use in the future, risks for problems associated with the management of the radioactive waste such as groundwater contamination, risks for accidents and for risks for various forms of attacks on waste storage sites or reprocessing- and power-plants. However, these remain mostly only risks as historically there have only been few disasters at nuclear power plants with known relatively substantial environmental impacts.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power is one of the leading low carbon power generation methods of producing electricity, and in terms of total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated, has emission values comparable to or lower than renewable energy.


title: Nuclear power

text: A 2014 analysis of the carbon footprint literature by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the embodied total life-cycle emission intensity of nuclear power has a median value of 12g eq/kWh, which is the lowest among all commercial baseload energy sources.


title: Nuclear power

text: As of 2021, nuclear reactors worldwide have helped avoid the emission of 72 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide since 1970, compared to coal-fired electricity generation, according to a report.


title: Nuclear power

text: The average dose from natural background radiation is 2.4 millisievert per year (mSv/a) globally. It varies between 1mSv/a and 13mSv/a, depending mostly on the geology of the location. According to the United Nations (UNSCEAR), regular nuclear power plant operations, including the nuclear fuel cycle, increases this amount by 0.0002mSv/a of public exposure as a global average. The average dose from operating nuclear power plants to the local populations around them is less than 0.0001mSv/a.


title: Nuclear power

text: For comparison, the average dose to those living within 50 miles of a coal power plant is over three times this dose, at 0.0003mSv/a.


title: Nuclear power

text: Chernobyl resulted in the most affected surrounding populations and male recovery personnel receiving an average initial 50 to 100mSv over a few hours to weeks, while the remaining global legacy of the worst nuclear power plant accident in average exposure is 0.002mSv/a and is continuously dropping at the decaying rate, from the initial high of 0.04mSv per person averaged over the entire populace of the Northern Hemisphere in the year of the accident in 1986.


title: Nuclear power

text: The nuclear power debate concerns the controversy which has surrounded the deployment and use of nuclear fission reactors to generate electricity from nuclear fuel for civilian purposes.


title: Nuclear power

text: Proponents of nuclear energy regard it as a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions and increases energy security by decreasing dependence on other energy sources that are also<ref name="10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.024"></ref><ref name="10.1016/j.anucene.2017.08.019"></ref><ref name="10.1002/ente.201600444"></ref> often dependent on imports. For example, proponents note that annually, nuclear-generated electricity reduces 470 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise come from fossil fuels. Additionally, the amount of comparatively low waste that nuclear energy does create is safely disposed of by the large scale nuclear energy production facilities or it is repurposed/recycled for other energy uses. M. King Hubbert, who popularized the concept of peak oil, saw oil as a resource that would run out and considered nuclear energy its replacement.


title: Nuclear power

text: Proponents also claim that the present quantity of nuclear waste is small and can be reduced through the latest technology of newer reactors and that the operational safety record of fission-electricity in terms of deaths is so far "unparalleled". Kharecha and Hansen estimated that "global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO-equivalent (Gt-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning" and, if continued, it could prevent up to 7 million deaths and 240Gt-eq emissions by 2050.


title: Nuclear power

text: Proponents also bring to attention the opportunity cost of utilizing other forms of electricity. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that coal kills 30,000 people a year, as a result of its environmental impact, while 60 people died in the Chernobyl disaster. A real world example of impact provided by proponents is the 650,000 ton increase in carbon emissions in the two months following the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.


title: Nuclear power

text: Opponents believe that nuclear power poses many threats to people's health and environment such as the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, long-term safe waste management and terrorism in the future. They also contend that nuclear power plants are complex systems where many things can and have gone wrong. Costs of the Chernobyl disaster amount to ≈$68 billion as of 2019 and are increasing, the Fukushima disaster is estimated to cost taxpayers ~$187 billion, and radioactive waste management is estimated to cost the EU nuclear operators ~$250 billion by 2050. However, in countries that already use nuclear energy, when not considering reprocessing, intermediate nuclear waste disposal costs could be relatively fixed to certain but unknown degrees "as the main part of these costs stems from the operation of the intermediate storage facility".


title: Nuclear power

text: Critics find that one of the largest drawbacks to building new nuclear fission power plants are the large construction and operating costs when compared to alternatives of sustainable energy sources.<ref name="10.1016/j.erss.2014.04.015"></ref><ref name="10.5281/zenodo.5573718"></ref><ref name="10.1016/j.enpol.2016.03.012"></ref><ref name="10.1177/2399654418777765"></ref>


title: Nuclear power

text: Further costs include costs for ongoing research and development, expensive reprocessing in cases where such is practiced and decommissioning.<ref name="10.1016/j.rser.2021.110836"></ref> Proponents note that focussing on the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), however, ignores the value premium associated with 24/7 dispatchable electricity and the cost of storage and backup systems necessary to integrate variable energy sources into a reliable electrical grid. "Nuclear thus remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025. Only large hydro reservoirs can provide a similar contribution at comparable costs but remain highly dependent on the natural endowments of individual countries."


title: Nuclear power

text: Overall, many opponents find that nuclear energy cannot meaningfully contribute to climate change mitigation. In general, they find it to be, too dangerous, too expensive, to take too long for deployment, to be an obstacle to achieving a transition towards sustainability and carbon-neutrality, effectively being a distracting competition for resources (i.e. human, financial, time, infrastructure and expertise) for the deployment and development of alternative, sustainable, energy system technologies (such as for wind, ocean and solar – including e.g. floating solar – as well as ways to manage their intermittency other than nuclear baseload generation such as dispatchable generation, renewables-diversification,<ref name="10.1016/j.esr.2019.01.007"></ref> super grids, flexible energy demand and supply regulating smart grids and energy storage technologies).<ref name="10.1016/j.enpol.2016.04.013"></ref>


title: Nuclear power

text: Nevertheless, there is ongoing research and debate over costs of new nuclear, especially in regions where i.a. seasonal energy storage is difficult to provide and which aim to phase out fossil fuels in favor of low carbon power faster than the global average. Some find that financial transition costs for a 100% renewables-based European energy system that has completely phased out nuclear energy could be more costly by 2050 based on current technologies (i.e. not considering potential advances in e.g. green hydrogen, transmission and flexibility capacities, ways to reduce energy needs, geothermal energy and fusion energy) when the grid only extends across Europe. Arguments of economics and safety are used by both sides of the debate.


title: Nuclear power

text: Slowing global warming requires a transition to a low-carbon economy, mainly by burning far less fossil fuel. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is technically possible if no new fossil fuel power plants are built from 2019. This has generated considerable interest and dispute in determining the best path forward to rapidly replace fossil-based fuels in the global energy mix, with intense academic debate. Sometimes the IEA says that countries without nuclear should develop it as well as their renewable power.


title: Nuclear power

text: Several studies suggest that it might be theoretically possible to cover a majority of world energy generation with new renewable sources.


title: Nuclear power

text: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that if governments were supportive, renewable energy supply could account for close to 80% of the world's energy use by 2050.


title: Nuclear power

text: While in developed nations the economically feasible geography for new hydropower is lacking, with every geographically suitable area largely already exploited, some proponents of wind and solar energy claim these resources alone could eliminate the need for nuclear power.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear power is comparable to, and in some cases lower, than many renewable energy sources in terms of lives lost in the past per unit of electricity delivered. Depending on recycling of renewable energy technologies, nuclear reactors may produce a much smaller volume of waste, although much more toxic, expensive to manage and longer-lived. A nuclear plant also needs to be disassembled and removed and much of the disassembled nuclear plant needs to be stored as low-level nuclear waste for a few decades. The disposal and management of the wide variety of radioactive waste, of which there are over one quarter of a million tons as of 2018, can cause future damage and costs across the world for over or during hundreds of thousands of years – possibly over a million years, due to issues such as leakage, malign retrieval, vulnerability to attacks (including of reprocessing and power plants), groundwater contamination, radiation and leakage to above ground, brine leakage or bacterial corrosion. The European Commission Joint Research Centre found that as of 2021 the necessary technologies for geological disposal of nuclear waste are now available and can be deployed. Corrosion experts noted in 2020 that putting the problem of storage off any longer "isn't good for anyone". Separated plutonium and enriched uranium could be used for nuclear weapons, which – even with the current centralized control (e.g. state-level) and level of prevalence – are considered to be a difficult and substantial global risk for substantial future impacts on human health, lives, civilization and the environment.


title: Nuclear power

text: Analysis in 2015 by professor Barry W. Brook and colleagues found that nuclear energy could displace or remove fossil fuels from the electric grid completely within 10 years. This finding was based on the historically modest and proven rate at which nuclear energy was added in France and Sweden during their building programs in the 1980s. In a similar analysis, Brook had earlier determined that 50% of all global energy, including transportation synthetic fuels etc., could be generated within approximately 30 years if the global nuclear fission build rate was identical to historical proven installation rates calculated in GW per year per unit of global GDP (GW/year/$).


title: Nuclear power

text: This is in contrast to the conceptual studies for 100% renewable energy systems, which would require an order of magnitude more costly global investment per year, which has no historical precedent. These renewable scenarios would also need far greater land devoted to onshore wind and onshore solar projects. Brook notes that the "principal limitations on nuclear fission are not technical, economic or fuel-related, but are instead linked to complex issues of societal acceptance, fiscal and political inertia, and inadequate critical evaluation of the real-world constraints facing [the other] low-carbon alternatives."


title: Nuclear power

text: Scientific data indicates that – assuming 2021 emissions levels – humanity only has a carbon budget equivalent to 11 years of emissions left for limiting warming to 1.5°C while the construction of new nuclear reactors took a median of 7.2–10.9 years in 2018–2020, substantially longer than, alongside other measures, scaling up the deployment of wind and solar – especially for novel reactor types – as well as being more risky, often delayed and more dependent on state-support. Researchers have cautioned that novel nuclear technologies – which have been in development since decades, are less tested, have higher proliferation risks, have more new safety problems, are often far from commercialization and are more expensive – are not available in time.<ref name="10.1080/00963402.2021.1941600"></ref> Critics of nuclear energy often only oppose nuclear fission energy but not nuclear fusion; however, fusion energy is unlikely to be commercially widespread before 2050.


title: Nuclear power

text: The median land area used by US nuclear power stations per 1GW installed capacity is 1.3 square miles. To generate the same amount of electricity annually (taking into account capacity factors) from solar PV would require about 60 square miles, and from a wind farm about 310 square miles. Not included in this is land required for the associated transmission lines, water supply, rail lines, mining and processing of nuclear fuel, and for waste disposal.


title: Nuclear power

text: Current fission reactors in operation around the world are second or third generation systems, with most of the first-generation systems having been already retired.


title: Nuclear power

text: Research into advanced generation IV reactor types was officially started by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) based on eight technology goals, including to improve economics, safety, proliferation resistance, natural resource utilization and the ability to consume existing nuclear waste in the production of electricity.


title: Nuclear power

text: Most of these reactors differ significantly from current operating light water reactors, and are expected to be available for commercial construction after 2030.


title: Nuclear power

text: Hybrid nuclear power is a proposed means of generating power by the use of a combination of nuclear fusion and fission processes. The concept dates to the 1950s and was briefly advocated by Hans Bethe during the 1970s, but largely remained unexplored until a revival of interest in 2009, due to delays in the realization of pure fusion. When a sustained nuclear fusion power plant is built, it has the potential to be capable of extracting all the fission energy that remains in spent fission fuel, reducing the volume of nuclear waste by orders of magnitude, and more importantly, eliminating all actinides present in the spent fuel, substances which cause security concerns.


title: Nuclear power

text: Nuclear fusion reactions have the potential to be safer and generate less radioactive waste than fission.


title: Nuclear power

text: These reactions appear potentially viable, though technically quite difficult and have yet to be created on a scale that could be used in a functional power plant.


title: Nuclear power

text: Fusion power has been under theoretical and experimental investigation since the 1950s. Nuclear fusion research is underway but fusion energy is not likely to be commercially widespread before 2050.


title: Nuclear power

text: Several experimental nuclear fusion reactors and facilities exist. The largest and most ambitious international nuclear fusion project currently in progress is ITER, a large tokamak under construction in France. ITER is planned to pave the way for commercial fusion power by demonstrating self-sustained nuclear fusion reactions with positive energy gain. Construction of the ITER facility began in 2007, but the project has run into many delays and budget overruns. The facility is now not expected to begin operations until the year 2027–11 years after initially anticipated. A follow on commercial nuclear fusion power station, DEMO, has been proposed. There are also suggestions for a power plant based upon a different fusion approach, that of an inertial fusion power plant.


title: Nuclear power

text: Fusion-powered electricity generation was initially believed to be readily achievable, as fission-electric power had been. However, the extreme requirements for continuous reactions and plasma containment led to projections being extended by several decades. In 2020, more than 80 years after the first attempts, commercialization of fusion power production was thought to be unlikely before 2050.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: Born in Malta to a British father and an Indo-Guyanese mother, Willis was raised in north London and California.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: On March 21, 2009, Emma Heming married actor Bruce Willis in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The ceremony was not legally binding and the couple were married again in a civil ceremony in Beverly Hills, six days later. They have two daughters together. Emma Willis is also a stepmother to Bruce Willis' three elder daughters from his first marriage to Demi Moore.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: Emma Heming was first discovered at age 16 on the UK morning television show, The Big Breakfast find me a supermodel competition, with Lorraine Ashton model agency which she won in 1991.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: Emma Willis was the former spokesmodel for the Canadian lingerie retailer La Senza and has appeared in advertisements around the world, including for Dior Bronze, Escada, Gap, Garnier, Intimissimi, John Frieda, Palmers, and Redken.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: Willis has appeared on the covers of French "Elle", Spanish "Elle", Turkish "Elle", US "Glamour", "Shape", "Town and Country", and "W Magazine". In 2005, "Maxim" magazine placed her at number 86 in its "Top 100" list.


title: Emma Heming Willis

text: She has also walked the runway for fashion shows including Herve Leger, John Galliano, Paco Rabanne, Christian Dior, Chanel, Maska, Thierry Mugler, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren, and Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.


title: Chili pepper

text: Chili peppers (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli), from Nahuatl "chīlli" (), are varieties of the berry-fruit of plants from the genus "Capsicum", which are members of the nightshade family Solanaceae, cultivated for their pungency. Chili peppers are widely used in many cuisines as a spice to add "heat" to dishes. Capsaicin and related compounds known as capsaicinoids are the substances giving chili peppers their intensity when ingested or applied topically. While "chili peppers" are (to varying degrees) pungent or "spicy", there are other varieties of capsicum such as bell peppers (UK: peppers) which generally provide additional sweetness and flavor to a meal rather than “heat.”


title: Chili pepper

text: Chili peppers are believed to have originated somewhere in Central or South America. and were first cultivated in Mexico. After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread around the world, used for both food and traditional medicine. This led to a wide variety of cultivars, including the "annuum" species, with its "glabriusculum" variety and New Mexico cultivar group, and the species of "baccatum", "chinense", "frutescens", and "pubescens".


title: Chili pepper

text: Cultivars grown in North America and Europe are believed to all derive from "Capsicum annuum", and have white, yellow, red or purple to black fruits. In 2019, the world's production of raw green chili peppers amounted to 38 million tons, with China producing half.


title: Chili pepper

text: "Capsicum" plants originated in modern-day Bolivia and have been a part of human diets since about 7,500 BC. They are one of the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas. Origins of cultivating chili peppers have been traced to east-central Mexico some 6,000 years ago, although, according to research by the New York Botanical Garden press in 2014, chili plants were first cultivated independently across different locations in the Americas including highland Bolivia, central Mexico, and the Amazon. They were one of the first self-pollinating crops cultivated in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America.


title: Chili pepper

text: Peru has the highest variety of cultivated "Capsicum" diversity because it is a center of diversification where varieties of all five domesticates were introduced, grown, and consumed in pre-Columbian times. The largest diversity of wild "Capsicum" peppers is consumed in Bolivia. Bolivian consumers distinguish two basic forms: "ulupicas", species with small round fruits including "C. eximium", "C. cardenasii", "C. eshbaughii", and "C. caballeroi" landraces; and "arivivis" with small elongated fruits including "C. baccatum" var. "baccatum" and "C. chacoense" varieties.


title: Chili pepper

text: When Christopher Columbus and his crew reached the Caribbean, they were the first Europeans to encounter "Capsicum." They called them "peppers" because, like black pepper of the genus "Piper" known in Europe, they have a spicy, hot taste unlike other foods.


title: Chili pepper

text: Chili peppers spread to Asia through their introduction by Portuguese traders, who—aware of their trade value and resemblance to the spiciness of black pepper—promoted their commerce in the Asian spice trade routes. They were introduced in India by the Portuguese towards the end of the 16th century. In 21st-century Asian cuisine, chili peppers are commonly used across many regions.


title: Chili pepper

text: In 2020, 36 million tonnes of green chili peppers were produced worldwide, with China producing 46% of the total.


title: Chili pepper

text: Though there are only a few commonly used species, there are many cultivars and methods of preparing chili peppers that have different names for culinary use. Green and red bell peppers, for example, are the same cultivar of "C. annuum". Unripe peppers are green (although peppers that do not turn red on ripening have been bred). In the same species are the jalapeño, the poblano (which, when dried, is referred to as ancho), New Mexico, serrano, and other cultivars.


title: Chili pepper

text: Peppers are commonly broken down into two groupings: bell peppers (UK: sweet peppers) and hot peppers. Most popular pepper varieties are seen as falling into one of these categories or a cross between them.


title: Chili pepper

text: The substances that give chili peppers their pungency (spicy heat) when ingested or applied topically are capsaicin (8-methyl-"N"-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) and several related chemicals, collectively called "capsaicinoids". The quantity of capsaicin varies by variety, and on growing conditions. Water-stressed peppers usually produce stronger pods. When a habanero plant is stressed, by absorbing low water for example, the concentration of capsaicin increases in some parts of the fruit.


title: Chili pepper

text: When peppers are consumed by mammals such as humans, capsaicin binds with pain receptors in the mouth and throat, potentially evoking pain via spinal relays to the brainstem and thalamus where heat and discomfort are perceived. However, birds are unable to perceive the hotness and so they can eat some of the hottest peppers. The intensity of the "heat" of chili peppers is commonly reported in Scoville heat units (SHU), invented by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. Historically, it was a measure of the dilution of an amount of chili extract added to sugar syrup before its heat becomes undetectable to a panel of tasters; the more it has to be diluted to be undetectable, the more powerful the variety, and therefore the higher the rating. The modern method is a quantitative analysis of SHU using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to directly measure the capsaicinoid content of a chili pepper variety. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, and crystalline-to-waxy solid at room temperature, and measures 16,000,000 SHU.


title: Chili pepper

text: Capsaicin is produced by the plant as a defense against mammalian predators and microbes, in particular a fusarium fungus carried by hemipteran insects that attack certain species of chili peppers, according to one study. Peppers increased the quantity of capsaicin in proportion to the damage caused by fungal predation on the plant's seeds.


title: Chili pepper

text: Chili pepper pods are technically berries. When used fresh, they are most often prepared and eaten like a vegetable. Whole pods can be dried and then crushed or ground into chili powder that is used as a spice or seasoning. Chilies can be dried to prolong their shelf life. Chili peppers can also be preserved by brining, immersing the pods in oil, or by pickling.


title: Chili pepper

text: Many fresh chilies such as poblano have a tough outer skin that does not break down on cooking. Chilies are sometimes used whole or in large slices, by roasting, or other means of blistering or charring the skin, so as not to entirely cook the flesh beneath. When cooled, the skins will usually slip off easily.


title: Chili pepper

text: The leaves of every species of Capsicum are edible. Though almost all other Solanaceous crops have toxins in their leaves, chili peppers do not. The leaves, which are mildly bitter and nowhere near as hot as the fruit, are cooked as greens in Filipino cuisine, where they are called "dahon ng sili" (literally "chili leaves"). They are used in the chicken soup "tinola". In Korean cuisine, the leaves may be used in kimchi. In Japanese cuisine, the leaves are cooked as greens, and also cooked in "tsukudani" style for preservation.


title: Chili pepper

text: Many Mexican dishes, including variations on chiles rellenos, use the entire chili. Dried whole chilies may be reconstituted before grinding to a paste. The chipotle is the smoked, dried, ripe jalapeño. In the northern Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora, chiltepin peppers (a wild pepper) are used in cheeses and soups to add spiciness to dishes. In southern Mexico, mole sauce is made with dried chiles, such as ancho and chipotle peppers. Chiles are used in salsas. Mexican households usually grow chile plants to use in cooking.


title: Chili pepper

text: In India, most households always keep a stock of fresh hot green chilies at hand, and use them to flavor most curries and dry dishes. It is typically lightly fried with oil in the initial stages of preparation of the dish. Some states in India, such as Rajasthan, make entire dishes only by using spices and chilies.


title: Chili pepper

text: Chili is a staple fruit in Bhutan. Bhutanese call this crop "ema" (in Dzongkha) or "solo" (in Sharchop). The "ema datshi" recipe is entirely made of chili mixed with local cheese.


title: Chili pepper

text: Chilies are present in many cuisines. Some notable chili-forward dishes other than the ones mentioned elsewhere in this article include arrabbiata sauce, paprikash, chiles en nogada, jerk chicken, mole poblano, nam phrik, 'nduja, "sambal", and som tam.


title: Chili pepper

text: Fresh or dried chilies are often used to make hot sauce, a liquid condiment—usually bottled when commercially available—that adds spice to other dishes. Hot sauces are found in many cuisines including harissa from North Africa, chili oil from China (known as rāyu in Japan), and sriracha from Thailand. Dried chilies are also used to infuse cooking oil.


title: Chili pepper

text: The contrast in color and appearance makes chili plants interesting to some as a purely decorative garden plant.


title: Chili pepper

text: Psychologist Paul Rozin suggests that eating chilies is an example of a "constrained risk" like riding a roller coaster, in which extreme sensations like pain and fear can be enjoyed because individuals know that these sensations are not actually harmful. This method lets people experience extreme feelings without any significant risk of bodily harm.


title: Chili pepper

text: Capsaicin, the pungent chemical in chili peppers, is used as an analgesic in topical ointments, nasal sprays, and dermal patches to relieve pain. A 2022 review of preliminary research indicated that regular consumption of chili peppers was associated with weak evidence for a lower risk of death from cardiovascular diseases and cancer.


title: Chili pepper

text: Capsaicin extracted from chilies is used in pepper sprays and some tear gas formulations as a chemical irritant, for use as less-lethal weapons for control of unruly individuals or crowds. Such products have considerable potential for misuse, and may cause injury or death.


title: Chili pepper

text: Conflicts between farmers and elephants have long been widespread in African and Asian countries, where elephants nightly destroy crops, raid grain houses, and sometimes kill people. Farmers have found the use of chilies effective in crop defense against elephants. Elephants do not like capsaicin. Because the elephants have a large and sensitive olfactory and nasal system, the smell of the chili causes them discomfort and deters them from feeding on the crops. By planting a few rows of the fruit around valuable crops, farmers create a buffer zone through which the elephants are reluctant to pass. Chili dung bombs are also used for this purpose. They are bricks made of mixing dung and chili, and are burned, creating a noxious smoke that keeps hungry elephants out of farmers' fields. This can lessen dangerous physical confrontation between people and elephants.


title: Chili pepper

text: Birds do not have the same sensitivity to capsaicin, because it targets a specific pain receptor in mammals. Chili peppers are eaten by birds living in the chili peppers' natural range, possibly contributing to seed dispersal and evolution of the protective capsaicin in chili peppers, as a bird in flight can spread the seeds further away from the parent plant after they pass through its digestive system than any land or tree dwelling mammal could do so under the same circumstances, thus reducing competition for resources.


title: Chili pepper

text: Red hot chili peppers are 88% water, 9% carbohydrates, 2% protein, and 0.4% fat (table). In a 100 gram reference amount, chili peppers supply 40 calories, and are a rich source of vitamin C and vitamin B (table).


title: Chili pepper

text: The three primary spellings are "chili", "chile" and "chilli", all of which are recognized by dictionaries.


title: Chili pepper

text: The name of the plant is unrelated to that of Chile, the country, which has an uncertain etymology perhaps relating to local place names. Certain Spanish-speaking countries in South America and the Caribbean, including Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, call the peppers as "ají", a word of Taíno origin.


title: Chili pepper

text: Though "pepper" originally referred to the genus "Piper", not "Capsicum", the latter usage is included in English dictionaries, including the "Oxford English Dictionary" and Merriam-Webster. The word "pepper" is also commonly used in the botanical and culinary fields in the names of different types of pungent plants and their fruits.


title: Chili pepper

text: The volatile oil in spicy peppers may cause skin irritation, requiring handwashing and care when touching the eyes or any sensitive body parts. Consuming hot peppers may cause stomach pain, hyperventilation, sweating, vomiting, and symptoms possibly requiring hospitalization.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Richard John "Dick" Grayson is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly in association with Batman and Teen Titans. Created by writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, he first appeared in "Detective Comics" #38 in April 1940 as the original and most popular incarnation of Robin, Batman's crime-fighting partner. In "Tales of the Teen Titans" #44 (July 1984), the character, after becoming a young adult, retires his role as Robin and assumes the superhero persona of Nightwing (created by Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez).


title: Dick Grayson

text: The youngest in a family of acrobats known as the "Flying Graysons", Grayson witnesses a mafia boss named Tony Zucco kill his parents to extort money from the circus that employed them. After the tragic murder, Batman (Bruce Wayne) takes Grayson in as his legal ward and trains him to become his crime-fighting partner Robin. He is written by many authors as the first son of Batman. As well as being Batman's crime-fighting partner, Grayson establishes himself as the leader of the Teen Titans, DC's first team of teenage superheroes. As a young man, he retires as Robin and takes on his own superhero identity, becoming Nightwing. As Nightwing, he continues to lead the Teen Titans, the Titans, and later, the Outsiders. In the first volume of his eponymous series (1996–2009), he becomes the protector of Blüdhaven, Gotham's economically troubled neighboring city, the locale the character is most closely associated with. He has also been depicted as protecting the streets of New York, Chicago, and Gotham City over the years.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Grayson has also taken on the identity of Batman on a few occasions. In the aftermath of "", he was not offered the role of Batman while Wayne was recovering from a broken back because he felt that Nightwing was a hero in his own right and not Batman's understudy, but after the events of the "Zero Hour" miniseries later that year, Grayson temporarily fills in as Batman, beginning in "Robin" (Vol. 2) #0 (1994) and extending throughout the "" storyline in 1995. Grayson again assumes the mantle following the events of "Batman R.I.P." (2008) and "Final Crisis" (2008–2009). As Batman, he moves to Gotham City following his mentor's apparent death and partners with the fifth Robin, Damian Wayne. Following Wayne's return, both men maintained the Batman identity until 2011, when Grayson returned to the Nightwing identity with DC's New 52 continuity reboot. In a 2014 comic story, he is forced to abandon the Nightwing identity after being unmasked on TV, and faking his death, setting up Tim Seeley's "Grayson" comic book, Dick becomes Agent 37, Batman's mole in the nefarious spy organization Spyral. Following the conclusion of the "Grayson" series, and the restoration of his secret identity in the series' final issue, he returns to being Nightwing as part of the DC Rebirth relaunch in 2016. During the Tom King's Batman run and after the frustrating marriage between Wayne and Selina Kyle, Grayson is also seen taking the mantle during the first part of the "Cold Days" arc, as Wayne is confined in a jury while Mr. Freeze is on trial.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Dick Grayson has appeared as Robin in several other media adaptations: the 1943 serial played by Douglas Croft, the 1949 serial played by Johnny Duncan, the 1966–1968 live action "Batman" television series and its motion picture portrayed by Burt Ward, and played by Chris O'Donnell in the 1995 film "Batman Forever" and its 1997 sequel, "Batman & Robin". Dick Grayson appears in the "Titans" television series for the DC Universe streaming service and HBO Max played by Brenton Thwaites. Loren Lester voiced the character Robin in "" and later as Nightwing's first screen adaptation in "The New Batman Adventures", Jesse McCartney voices Grayson as both Robin and Nightwing in "Young Justice: The Animated Series", Sean Maher voices Nightwing in the "DC Animated Movie Universe", and Michael Cera voices an overly cheerful Grayson as Robin in "The Lego Batman Movie". In May 2011, IGN ranked Dick Grayson No. 11 on their list of the "Top 100 Super Heroes of All Time". In 2013, ComicsAlliance ranked Grayson as Nightwing as No. 1 on its list of the "50 Sexiest Male Characters in Comics".


title: Dick Grayson

text: The character was first introduced in "Detective Comics" #38 (1940) by Batman creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Robin's debut was an effort to get younger readers to enjoy Batman. The name "Robin, The Boy Wonder" and the medieval look of the original costume are inspired by the legendary hero Robin Hood. Finger had named Dick Grayson after both the half-brother of pulp fiction character Frank Merriwell, also named Dick, and book editor Charles Grayson, Jr. The costume was designed by Jerry Robinson who drew it from memory based on Robin Hood illustrations by N. C. Wyeth.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In his first appearance, Dick Grayson is a circus acrobat, and, with his parents, one of the "Flying Graysons". Robin was born on the first day of spring, the son of John Grayson and Mary Grayson, a young aerialist couple. While preparing for a performance, Dick overhears two gangsters attempting to extort protection money from the circus owner. The owner refuses, so the gangsters sabotage the trapeze wires with acid. During the next performance, the trapeze from which Dick's parents are swinging snaps, sending them to their deaths. Before he can go to the police, Batman appears to him and warns him that the two gangsters work for Tony Zucco, a very powerful crime boss and that revealing his knowledge could lead to his death. When Batman recounts the murder of his own parents, Dick asks to become his aide. After extensive training, Dick becomes Robin. They start by disrupting Zucco's gambling and extortion rackets. They then successfully bait the riled Zucco into visiting a construction site, where they capture him.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Robin's origin has a thematic connection to Batman's in that both see their parents killed by criminals, creating an urge to battle the criminal element. Bruce sees a chance to direct the anger and rage that Dick feels in a way that he cannot, thus creating a father/son bond and understanding between the two. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, DC Comics portrayed Batman and Robin as a team, deeming them the "Dynamic Duo", rarely publishing a "Batman" story without his sidekick; stories entirely devoted to Robin appeared in "Star-Spangled Comics" from 1947 through 1952.


title: Dick Grayson

text: The character history of the Earth-Two Robin accordingly adopts all of the earliest stories featuring the character from the 1940s and 1950s, while the adventures of the mainstream Robin (who lived on "Earth-One") begin later and with certain elements of his origin retold. Both were depicted as separate, though parallel, individuals living in their respective universes, with the "older" Earth-Two character eventually reaching death in "Crisis on Infinite Earths".


title: Dick Grayson

text: 1964's "The Brave and the Bold" #54 introduces a junior version of the Justice League of America. This team is led by the modern-day Robin, residing on Earth-One, and was joined by two other teenage sidekicks, Aqualad (sidekick of Aquaman) and Kid Flash (sidekick of the Flash), to stop the menace of Mr. Twister. Later, the three sidekicks join forces with Speedy (sidekick of Green Arrow) and Wonder Girl to free their mentors in the JLA from mind-controlled thrall. They decide to become a real team: the Teen Titans. By the tactical skills gleaned from Batman, Robin is swiftly recognized as a leader before the Titans disband some years later.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In 1969, still in the Pre-"Crisis" continuity, writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams return Batman to his darker roots. One part of this effort is writing Robin out of the series by sending Dick Grayson to Hudson University and into a separate strip in the back of "Detective Comics". The by-now Teen Wonder appears only sporadically in "Batman" stories of the 1970s as well as in a short-lived revival of "The Teen Titans".


title: Dick Grayson

text: In October 1980, a new roster of the Teen Titans was featured in "DC Comics Presents" #26 featuring Robin, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash. Given a series of their starring writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, later additions to the team would include Changeling (Beast Boy), Raven, Cyborg, and Starfire. The New Teen Titans are run by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and editor Len Wein. With Marvel outperforming DC Comics in sales, the then-new President of DC Comics Jenette Khan brought in the aforementioned team who would choose to use the Teen Titans characters in a bid to revitalize sales. During the comic's run, the series was among DC's most popular selling books. outperforming much of the other titles featuring more popular characters. During his leadership of the Titans, however, he had a falling out with Batman, leading to an estrangement that would last for years.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In the pre-"Crisis on Infinite Earths" continuity, the maturing Dick Grayson grows weary of his role as Batman's young sidekick. He renames himself Nightwing, recalling his adventure in the Kryptonian city of Kandor, where he and Batman meet the local hero of the same name. In post-Crisis continuity, he is fired by Batman after being shot by the Joker and becomes Nightwing. He maintains this identity during his role in the Teen Titans and occasionally returns to assist Batman and his successors as Robin in the form of Jason Todd and Tim Drake, Tim, in particular, becoming a younger brother figure to him.


title: Dick Grayson

text: When Bruce's back is broken by Bane during the "" story arc, Bruce selects Jean-Paul Valley as his replacement as Batman as he does not want to burden Dick with the role and fears that Dick may go after Bane in revenge. However, when Valley proves to be too unstable to be Batman, Bruce undergoes a rigorous recovery and training program with the aid of Doctor Shondra Kinsolving and Lady Shiva to restore him to full health, defeating Valley with Dick and Tim's aid. However, feeling that he needs to re-evaluate Batman and his mission after Valley's defeat, Bruce leaves Gotham once again, after appointing Dick as his successor during the "Prodigal" story arc. While acting as Batman, Dick is left with a clearer idea of the psychological stresses Bruce must endure in the role, as well as facing some of Bruce's newer enemies—such as Killer Croc, the Ventriloquist, and the Ratcatcher—while settling his long-standing issues with Two-Face.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In "Nightwing: Alfred's Return" #1 (1995), Dick Grayson travels to England to find Alfred Pennyworth who had resigned from Bruce Wayne's service following the events of the "KnightSaga". Before returning to Gotham City together, they prevent an attempted coup d'état against the British government that involves destroying the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Later on, with the "Nightwing" miniseries (September to December 1995, written by Dennis O'Neil with Greg Land as an artist), Dick briefly considers retiring from being Nightwing forever before family papers uncovered by Alfred reveals a possible link between the murder of the Flying Graysons and the Crown Prince of Kravis. Journeying to Kravis, Nightwing helps to topple the murderous Kravian leader and prevent ethnic cleansing, while learning his parents' true connection to the Prince; they witnessed the original Prince being killed and replaced with an impostor who became as bad as his predecessor (although Zucco killed the Graysons before the conspirators could do anything about it). In the aftermath, Dick returns to his role as Nightwing, recognizing that, for all his problems with Bruce, Bruce never "made" him become Robin or join his crusade, accepting that he imitated Bruce's example because Bruce was worthy of imitation.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In 1996, following the success of the miniseries, DC Comics launched a monthly solo series featuring Nightwing (written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Scott McDaniel), in which he patrols Gotham City's neighboring municipality of Blüdhaven, relocating there to investigate a series of murders and remaining as he recognized that the city needed protection. He remains the city's guardian for some time, facing foes such as Blockbuster and new villains such as Torque, and even becomes a police officer so that he can make an impact on the city's criminal activity in both parts of his life. Later, Grayson divides his duties between Bludhaven and Gotham after and the subsequent decision to declare Gotham a No Man's Land, Grayson occasionally assisting his mentor and other members of Bat-Family in maintaining and restoring order in Gotham until it is fully rebuilt. When the Justice League vanished into the past fighting an ancient sorceress Gamemnae, Nightwing was selected as the leader of the reserve League created by an emergency program Batman had established in the event of his League being defeated, Batman described Nightwing as the only person he could have picked to lead the new team.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Eventually, the original League is restored, and Nightwing departs along with some of his League-although others remain as some of the original team take a leave of absence-although Batman notes that his leadership of the League proves that he is ready for more responsibilities. However, the death of Blockbuster prompts Nightwing to leave Bludhaven due to his crisis of conscience; Blockbuster was killed by a vigilante Tarantula and Nightwing did not stop it even when he had the chance to do so. While Nightwing returns to Gotham to heal after assisting Batman in dealing with a series of gang wars, Blüdhaven is destroyed by the Secret Society of Super-Villains when they drop Chemo on it.


title: Dick Grayson

text: During the battle of Metropolis, Grayson suffers a near-fatal injury from Alexander Luthor, Jr. when he shields Wayne from Luthor's attack. Originally, the editors at DC intended to have Grayson killed in "Infinite Crisis" as Newsarama revealed from the DC Panel at WizardWorld Philadelphia:


title: Dick Grayson

text: After spending some time away with Bruce and Tim to heal and rebuild after their harsh times before the Crisis, Dick relocates to New York but has trouble finding work as both Dick Grayson and Nightwing. During the "Batman R.I.P." storyline, Nightwing is ambushed by the International Club of Villains. He is later seen being held in Arkham Asylum, where one of the surgeons, in reality also the civilian identity of ICoV member Le Bossu, arranged for Nightwing to be admitted under the name of Pierrot Lunaire (another ICoV member) and be kept both heavily drugged and regularly beaten by staff to subdue him. Scheduled for an experimental lobotomy by Le Bossu himself, he manages to free himself and come to Batman's aid for the finale of the story arc.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Following the events of Batman's apparent death during the "Final Crisis", Nightwing has closed down shop in New York to return to Gotham, where after the events of "", he assumes the identity of Batman, with Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne's biological son, as the new Robin.


title: Dick Grayson

text: The new team of Batman and Robin is the focus of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's "Batman and Robin" series. Their dynamic reverses the classic dynamic of Bruce and Dick, by having a lighter and friendlier Batman paired with a more intense and dark Robin. Over time, Dick's experience as the Dark Knight would harden his personality as his mentor.


title: Dick Grayson

text: During this period, Dick Grayson as Batman also features as a member of the Justice League in a short-lived run by the writer James Robinson. After an intense confrontation with the Club of Villains and the mysterious Doctor Simon Hurt (who has established fake evidence that he is Bruce's father Thomas Wayne), Hurt is defeated when Bruce returns to the present. However, Bruce leaves Dick to continue to act as Batman in Gotham with Damian as his partner while he sets up the new 'Batman Incorporated' program, Bruce publicly identifying himself as Batman's financial backer to justify a global Batman-themed operation where he funds multiple other vigilantes.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Dick Grayson is re-established as Nightwing following DC's "Flashpoint" crossover event, after which the publisher relaunched all of its titles and made alterations to its continuity as part of an initiative called The New 52. In the new status quo, Bruce Wayne is once again the only Batman, and Dick, like the other members of the adoptive family, is a few years younger. Dick, despite being 19 is drawn a bit shorter than in his pre-relaunch frame. This is likely due to adding believability to his acrobat past. His origin story remains the same (Bruce Wayne takes him in upon his parents' murder by Zucco) except that Dick prodigiously talented at reading body language, allowing him to deduce Batman's secret identity upon their first meeting.


title: Dick Grayson

text: According to various interviews it is stated that Dick was adopted at 16 as opposed to as an adult due to the DCNU's timeline existing for only five years. Dick Grayson is shown in flashbacks as Robin with a revamped version of the Robin costume in "Nightwing" (vol. 3) #0 (November 2012) and "Batman and Robin" (vol. 2) Annual #2 (March 2014).


title: Dick Grayson

text: In his civilian identity, he is attacked by an assassin named Saiko who insists that he is the fiercest killer in Gotham. The series "Batman Incorporated" relaunches with a second volume, continuing its story while taking into account the New 52's continuity changes; Dick is now depicted as Nightwing, and not as Batman, but the change is not addressed in the comic itself. In "Nightwing", Dick inherits the deed to the circus from a dying C. C. Haly and begins a relationship with his childhood friend acrobat Raya Vestri. Saiko tortures Haly for information on Nightwing's secret identity, and the old man dies in Dick's arms after telling him the circus holds a terrible secret. Investigating leads, he tracks down a supervillain named Feedback, who used to be a childhood friend but does not learn anything. Following Haly's clues, he finds a mysterious Book of Names in the circus that has his name on the last page. Later the circus announces they will be doing a memorial show on the anniversary of the night Dick's parents were murdered, and Saiko attacks by detonating a massive explosion.


title: Dick Grayson

text: It is then revealed that the circus has been training assassins for years, and Saiko was a childhood friend using Raya as an accomplice. Grayson had been selected to become a new Talon for the Court of Owls, but when Batman adopted him, Saiko took his place. The killer plummets to his death and Raya turns herself in. Returning to the Batcave, Bruce reveals to Dick that the current Talon is his great-grandfather William Cobb. During the Night of the Owls event Dick faces Cobb, who was revived while protecting Mayor Hady. Following the event, Dick decided to keep Haly's Circus in Gotham and plans to invest in turning an abandoned amusement park into their new location without Bruce's money. He works with Sonia Branch, the daughter of Tony Zucco, the crime boss who murdered Dick's parents, into getting a loan for this plan by investing his entire trust fund despite being a high-risk due to Saiko's recent attack. The problems arise because of the guilt Sonia feels towards her father's actions and many members of the circus are afraid for their lives because of the previous disasters and accuse Dick Grayson of being a flake, making it hard for those who choose to stay.


title: Dick Grayson

text: The "Death of the Family" crossover event across the "Batman"-related comic books led to a major shift in Nightwing's status quo. During the storyline, one of Dick's friends Jimmy Clark, who worked as a circus clown, was murdered by the Joker because Joker felt like Jimmy was a knockoff of him. Nightwing later discovers Joker broke Raya out of prison, infected her with his Joker venom, and forced her to fight him while wearing a makeshift Nightwing costume. The toxin eventually killed Raya, though Nightwing tried in vain with an anti-toxin to save her. Nightwing then discovered that Joker left a message on Raya's abdomen that he was targeting Haly's Circus next. However upon arriving there, Joker unveils his plan to burn the circus to the ground and then infects Nightwing with his gas which not only causes him to experience hallucinations of Jimmy and Raya but he is soon attacked by the other members of Haly's Circus that were also affected by the toxin allowing Joker to capture him.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In the aftermath, Haly's Circus is gone, with Dick breaking as a result of having lost his investment. While the other circus members survived since Joker used a different Joker venom on them, they blame Dick and decide to leave after Raya and Jimmy's funeral, though deep down they know it is not his fault. Dick becomes bitter about his loss. After he used excessive force to bring down some criminals that tried to plunder valuables from the remains of the circus, Damian, who has been monitoring him, can talk some sense into Nightwing, which helps him recover.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Nightwing is later deeply affected by the death of Damian following his murder at the hands of Damian's clone, the Heretic, in "Batman Incorporated". With Damian's death and potential resurrection becoming an obsession of Batman's, Dick is shunned by Bruce when he tries to tell him to move on, in "Batman and Nightwing" (a retitled "Batman & Robin" #23).


title: Dick Grayson

text: Later, the "Nightwing" series changes its setting to Chicago, Illinois. Sonia Branch reveals to Dick an e-mail that indicates that her father Zucco is still alive. After giving the address to Red Robin to try and track down who sent it, Robin uncovers that Zucco is residing in Chicago. Nightwing moves to Chicago to find and arrest Zucco, who is now living under the assumed identity of Billy Lester, an assistant to the mayor. Soon after arriving in Chicago, Dick meets his new roommates, a photojournalist named Michael and a computer specialist named Joey. After leaving the apartment to meet with Johnny Spade, a borderline criminal who steals and sells information, their meeting is interrupted by the police. A short chase results in the accidental destruction of a newly rebuilt subway. Meanwhile, a criminal hacker called the Prankster tortures, maims, and kills criminals con men who are untouchable by the police.


title: Dick Grayson

text: The Chicago story is later abruptly ended by Nightwing's role in a larger company-wide crossover event. After the Crime Syndicate invades Earth-Prime after the "Trinity War" "Justice League" storyline and defeats the Justice League, the DC crossover story "Forever Evil" depicts Nightwing's capture by the Crime Syndicate, who exposes his secret identity to the world. Following their escape from the Syndicate, Batman and Catwoman decide to rescue him. He then is invited by Owlman to help defeat the Crime Syndicate, which he accepts. Nightwing is severely beaten by Ultraman and is attached to a device from a parallel world known as the Murder Machine, which is controlled by his heart rate and is reportedly impossible to escape from alive. When Batman and Lex Luthor arrive to free him, Lex stops his heart to fool the system so he can disarm it. However, Batman, enraged over what Lex has done, attacks him. Luthor explains it is not too late to save Grayson. In an uncharacteristically heroic moment, Luthor injects Grayson's heart with adrenaline, which successfully revives Grayson. Cyborg enters, having defeated Grid, and Grayson joins Batman, Cyborg, and Catwoman in freeing the Justice League from the Firestorm Matrix.


title: Dick Grayson

text: After the defeat of the Syndicate, Grayson is seen with Batman in the Batcave. Batman tells him that he has to send him on the most dangerous mission he could undertake, requiring that Grayson fakes his death. Upon the latter's refusal (saying he can't do that to his family), the two have an all-out brawl during which Batman tells him Spyral is in possession of multiple secret identities and could kill his friends and family. As Bruce monologues about knowing the magnitude of what he's asking, Dick reiterates his refusal to keep his survival from his family. He finally gains the upper hand, winning the fight. However, Dick's phyrric victory brings him no satisfaction as he feels compelled to take on the mission, even as he tells Bruce, "if you make me do this, things can never be the same with us again."


title: Dick Grayson

text: The "Nightwing" title concluded in April 2014 at issue #30, and was replaced with a new title, "Grayson", which depicts Dick having given up his life as Nightwing at age 22 and going undercover as an agent of the Spyral organization where the former Batwoman Kathy Kane works. Written by Tim Seeley and former CIA counter-terrorism officer Tom King, the career change for Dick Grayson comes from the urging of Batman himself, who convinces him to remain dead to the world. Seeley stated that the series will be "leaning into" Grayson's sex symbol status. The character's look also is redesigned with no mask, but a blue-and-black outfit calling back to his pre-New 52 Nightwing counterpart with an addition of a "G" on his chest, said to be reminiscent of the Robin "R".


title: Dick Grayson

text: In the "Agent of Spyral" storyline, Dick (known as Agent 37) is enlisted by Mister Minos, the director of Spyral, after having been chosen by Helena Bertinelli to serve as a new candidate. However, Dick serves as a mole under Batman due to their agenda of unmasking heroes by collecting the Paragon organs, organs which contain the DNA of the Justice League and bestows meta-bioweapons the ability to use their powers. He assists Spyral's agenda to know more about Minos and his endgame, resulting in Spyral attaining most of the scattered organs. In a later story arc, Minos betrays Spyral and attempts to leak its secrets. To his surprise, he finds the new Agent Zero, who reveals that she, along with the upper echelon of Spyral, had used Minos to attract Dick into Spyral and kills Minos as he has outlived his life full of humor.


title: Dick Grayson

text: During "Batman and Robin Eternal", Grayson finds himself working with various other members of the Bat-Family when Bruce Wayne is amnesiac after his resurrection against the ruthless villain known only as "Mother", who, it is revealed, briefly met with Batman early in Grayson's career as Robin, believing that he shared her views on using trauma to make people stronger. Mother intends to trigger a global collapse with the reasoning that the survivors will rebuild a stronger world after being broken by tragedy and without the hindrance of parents to force their ideals on them, but Grayson and the rest of the Family can defeat her, Dick affirming that Batman helps the Robins become their people who can avoid the mistakes he made in dealing with his trauma rather than Mother's belief that she and Batman each teach people to use their trauma to define themselves. After the storyline, Dick meets with the restored Batman, assuring Bruce that, unlike Mother, he never forced his ideas on them, but simply gave them all an example that they chose to emulate while avoiding following it so exactly that they became like him.


title: Dick Grayson

text: When the Court of Owls plant a bomb inside Damian Wayne, they can blackmail Dick into officially joining their organization, although all sides are aware that Grayson intends to try and use his new position against them. The "Grayson" series ended in issue #20, wherein the final issue, it was revealed that all knowledge of Dick's identity was erased from most of the world with one of Spyral's satellites, allowing Dick to resume his superhero activities as Nightwing once again.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Starting with the "DC Rebirth" relaunch in 2016, Dick returned to being Nightwing with his black and blue costume, his Spyral contacts having wiped all global evidence of his dual identity and the bomb removed from Damian. He uses his new skills and expertise in espionage moving forward. Nightwing is prominently featured in two Rebirth books: the fourth volume of "Nightwing", his solo book, and "Titans", where Dick teams up with the other original "Teen Titans" after Wally West returns to the universe; through Wally, Dick remembers events of his life before "Flashpoint" and "The New 52". After the Titans are forcibly disbanded by the Justice League, Dick creates a new Titans team after the rupture of the Source Wall consisting of Donna Troy, Raven, Steel (Natasha Irons), Beast Boy, and Miss Martian.


title: Dick Grayson

text: In his solo book, Dick is paired with a vigilante named Raptor and the two plan to bring down the Court of Owls from the inside. Barbara criticizes Dick's willingness to trust him and does not agree with his methods. Though Raptor seemed willing to play by Dick's rules of not killing, he tricks Dick into agreeing to a plan that results in the deaths of all of the Parliament of Owls in Sydney. After knocking Dick out, Raptor goes to Gotham and kidnaps Bruce during a conference. Nightwing confronts him alone in the ruins of a circus in Paris. Raptor reveals that he grew up in the circus as a child and fell in love with Dick's mother, Mary, as they stole from the rich and powerful in Paris. Raptor watched over Dick in the shadows as he grew up, and developed a hatred for Bruce Wayne as he represented everything he and Mary were against and felt it was dishonoring her memory to have Dick raised by him. Dick defeats Raptor and rescues Bruce in time.


title: Dick Grayson

text: After joining forces with the pre-"Flashpoint" Superman to defeat the latest attack of Doctor Destiny, Dick contemplates checking out Bludhaven, based on Superman's reference to how the pre-"Flashpoint" Grayson acted as the city's guardian for a time, and ultimately decides to go there. While there he meets a supervillain rehabilitation group called the Run-Offs, all of which were villains he and Batman defeated in the past. He finds that most of them are being framed for crimes around the area and works with them to find the true culprits. After solving the case and clearing their names, Dick begins dating their leader Shawn Tsang, known as the former criminal the Defacer. Shawn is kidnapped by Professor Pyg after Dick discovers she might be pregnant with his child, and he teams up with Damian to track Pyg down and rescue her. After Shawn is revealed not to be pregnant, she ultimately breaks up with Dick, who focuses his efforts on taking down criminals such as Blockbuster, the returning Raptor, the Judge, and Wyrm.


title: Dick Grayson

text: During one of his nightly patrols with Batman, Nightwing is shot by KGBeast and nearly killed. As a result, he suffered from severe memory loss and attempted to build a new life in Bludhaven. He changed his name to Ric, gave up being Nightwing, and became a taxi driver that frequently went to bars. With Bludhaven suffering from an increase in crime from the vigilante's absence, a detective named Sapienza comes across Dick's abandoned hideout in the subway and decides to become the new Nightwing. Sapienza recruits a team of his friends in law enforcement to help him, and together they make a team of Nightwings using Dick Grayson's old uniforms. In addition to Sapienza, the team consists of Malcolm Hutch, the deputy chief in the Bludhaven fire department, Zak Edwards, the vice of the 10th precinct, and Colleen Edwards, detective of the 14th precinct.


title: Dick Grayson

text: During Year of the Villain, Ric is captured by William Cobb, his grandfather who is a Talon. A brain surgeon that Bruce hired to take care of Dick after he was shot named Dr. Haas was secretly a member of the Court, who was using a mystical memory crystal to alter Dick's memories and eventually shape him into becoming a Talon himself. William Cobb forces Ric to wear goggles and puts Dick under his spell. As a Talon, Grayson fights off other Nightwing heroes. A Nightwing hero name Connor Red shoots at Grayson's mask, making his eye visible. Connor Red pleads for mercy saying he has a family, and as the sun comes up Dick Grayson suddenly breaks out of his grandfather's control. Dick Grayson starts to remember his adventures as Nightwing. Ric defeats Talon, and saves his girlfriend Bea. Afterwards, he journeys to Switzerland to learn more answers about his past from Dr. Haas, who attempts to use the crystal to alter his memories once more. However, an explosion seemingly sends her down a river to her death while Ric can retrieve the memory crystal she used on him. During the "Joker War" storyline, the Joker steals the memory crystal and uses it to brainwash Grayson into believing he is the Joker's adopted son, "Dicky Boy" and turns him against the Bat Family in his latest war against Batman. After Barbara gets the crystal back, Bea uses it to allow him to fully regain his memories as Dick Grayson.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Like Batman, Nightwing has faced various villains ranging from common criminals to outlandish supervillains. While the character has primarily fought other Batman villains, he also has established villains that primarily oppose him. In addition, certain Batman villains have specific enmity with Dick Grayson.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Similarly to Batman, Dick Grayson possess no inherent super-powers and instead relies on his natural skills, abilities, and advanced technology. These combination of skills make Dick Grayson one of the most brilliant crime fighters on Earth in the DC Universe; A natural prodigious athlete, Dick Grayson is considered both an expert aerialist and the greatest acrobat in the DC Universe from his training at a young age as an aerialist and later from Batman's rigorous training as sidekick and protégé as Robin. While Batman was his primary trainer, he also received some combat training from Wildcat, Richard Dragon, and espionage training from Matron.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Overtime, Dick Grayson became a master of at least a half dozen martial arts styles with an emphasis on Savate while also favoring Arnis (Escrima) and is considered second to Batman in terms of fighting abilities. While his mastery of specific martial arts has not been specified (sans Savate & Arnis), stories over the character's history has expressed specific martial art disciplines he has exhibited including: Judo, Aikido, Capoeira, Kung Fu, Jeet Kune Do, Boxing, Hapkido, Jujutsu, Ninjutsu, Sambo, Taekwondo, and Karate. While fighting, comments from Black Mask and the first Shrike reveals that Dick Grayson combines each of his fighting styles during fights to get the better of opponents. His fighting ability and potential is enough to have garnered praise from other fellow martial artist and fighters such as Lady Shiva, Deathstroke and Ra's al Ghul, the latter whom bestowed the "Detective" title to in response to his defeat in a sword duel by Grayson. As a martial artist teacher, Dick Grayson proved capable enough to teach Tim Drake, Rose Wilson/Ravager, Thunder, and Nightrunner.


title: Dick Grayson

text: As a former apprentice to Batman, Dick Grayson is highly intelligent and is considered a world-class detective, possessing knowledge on forensic science and criminology while holding an advanced degree for the former. His detective abilities makes him among the best detectives in the DC Universe, considered among the few people (alongside Red Robin, The Question, and Elongated Man) to be second to Batman in deductive skills. Chief among his skills includes being able to analyze and read people, utilizing this skill in tandem to his leadership abilities and in combat by analyzing body language to anticipate a person's next move similarly to Cassandra Cain (mentally noting discrepancies such as blink rates, underdeveloped skills, and signs of nervousness). Dick Grayson is also considered superlative leader, tactician, and strategist, having served as a leader within Gotham, the Teen Titans, Titans, the Outsiders, and the Justice League; his leadership abilities surpasses his mentor and is described as "the most trusted hero after Superman".


title: Dick Grayson

text: One storyline suggested that if he were killed at an earlier point in time, the Justice League would fail to stop Trigon due to losing a suitable replacement for Bruce Wayne when he was inevitably killed by Darkseid in the "Final Crisis" event, deprived of their best tacticians. Among Grayson's other reptoire of skills includes disguise, advanced training in espionage, computer hacking, and escape artistry.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Dick's parents left him a trust fund which Lucius Fox turned into a small fortune. Although it is not comparable to Bruce Wayne's wealth, it has been enough to maintain his Nightwing equipment, purchase the rights to Haly's Circus (saving Dick's former home from financial troubles), and secretly buy his former Blüdhaven apartment building at 1013 Parkthorne Avenue. As Nightwing, Grayson is typically is armed with twin Eskrima sticks made from an unbreakable polymer. He also carries several dozen modified batarangs (called wing-dings) along with de-cel jump lines and gas capsules.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Dick Grayson's Robin costume alluded to the American robin and Robin Hood. The cape was alternately depicted as yellow or green. The costume also featured crakow-style shoes, which some artists would discard from the portrayal.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Dick Grayson's Nightwing costume was made of a version of the Nomex fire-resistant, triple-weave Kevlar-lined material. It was excellent protection against damage and was also insulated against electricity. Specifically tailored to his style of fighting, Nightwing's costume had fewer body-armor inlays than Batman's, anticipating a decreased need for shock absorption and an increased capacity for motion. Against opponents, both fast and strong, Nightwing had supplemental body-armor overlays that he could attach to his gauntlets, boots, shoulders, and mask. Instead of a black cape to keep him hidden, which Grayson dislikes wearing, the suit was light-sensitive, darkening when there was more light in the area. The mask, in the form of his symbol, was fixed in place with spirit gum, and included a built-in radio transmitter/receiver and Starlite night vision lenses. The third costume, with its stylized blue "wing" across his shoulders and extending to his hands, coloring his two middle fingers over a black bodysuit, made its first appearance in "Nightwing: Ties That Bind" #2 (October 1995), and was designed by the cover artist Brian Stelfreeze. His suit was also equipped with wings that allow him to glide.


title: Dick Grayson

text: As Batman, his Batsuit featured a lighter cape to accommodate his more acrobatic fighting style and a utility belt with a bat-shaped buckle. He also developed "para-capes" for his and Damian's costumes which gave them the ability to glide. Grayson is noticeably shorter than Bruce Wayne.


title: Dick Grayson

text: Post-Flashpoint with his return to Nightwing, Dick wore a similar suit, albeit with the blue "wing" being red throughout the New 52. Previously in the New 52's continuity as Nightwing, he formerly owned an armored suit which was blue and yellow, resembling a modern take on his previous first costume in the previous continuity, and another that was an armored suit that sported a red bat symbol, which is currently being used by Jason Todd though slightly modified for Jason's taste. Formerly before having to leave the Nightwing mantle post "Forever Evil", his suit was made up of sturdy but flexible material that not only suited his strength in speed and acrobatics but also was durable enough to take bullets from machine guns. His former costume was a stylized red "wing" across his shoulders and extending to his hands, coloring his two middle fingers over a black torso and legs. He also has gauntlets much like Batman's own suit. Nightwing's costume is tailored specifically to his unique style of crime-fighting. He also has variants of his costume in which one of his stylized red "wings" reach only to his shoulders, another to his wrists, and one which has hip and finger stripes.