Small Modular Pressurized Water Reactors Combined With Conventional Thermal Power Plant

Author(s):  
Huijing Jiang ◽  
Ning Bai ◽  
Huanfen Zhan ◽  
Feng Shen ◽  
Bin Gao ◽  
...  

Small modular reactor is investigated worldwide with the advantages of lower initial investment and short construction period. Generally, the economy of small modular pressurized water reactor (PWR) is not as good as large PWR, so various applications of small PWR are investigated, such as marine reactor, heat supply and sea water desalination. Limited to the parameters of steam generator, the generating efficiency for the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant is about 33%, while the steam temperature of supercritical fossil power plant can exceed 600°C and generating efficiency is more than 45%. The essence of a hybrid power plant is to use a fossil fuel to superheat wet steam in an outer steam superheating device, after the steam generator to improve the parameters of working fluid. On one hand, the innovative hybrid nuclear power plant which combines nuclear reactor with conventional thermal energy can improve the efficiency of small PWR. On the other hand, this hybrid power plant has lower carbon emission compared with traditional thermal power plant. This paper describes two different coupling schemes of small pressurized water reactor combined with supercritical thermal power plant using steam turbine. Efficiency of hybrid power plant is influenced by the coupling scheme, steam parameter of the superheating device outlet, the proportion of nuclear energy, efficiency of assemblies and so on. The plant efficiency becomes higher with the improvement of parameter of the superheating device’s outlet steam, and it is higher when the proportion of nuclear energy becomes lower. Take the 660MWt integrated small pressurized water reactor as an example, when the proportion of nuclear energy accounts for 48%, the thermal efficiency of this innovative hybrid power plant is about 43%,while the net efficiency is 41%, that is much higher than the efficiency of traditional pressurized water reactor, improving about 24 percent. As to the carbon emission, it depends on the coal consumption rate of power supply. The coal consumption rate of this hybrid power plant is 158g /kWh, while the consumption rate of thermal hybrid power plant is 280g/kWh, reducing about 44 percent. Also, the fundamental solutions of technical problems for this innovative hybrid power plant are discussed in the paper. Furthermore, several useful outcomes and suggestions for key equipments are put forward, such as the scheme of a superheating device and high-temperature steam turbine, and the possibility of using a lava boiler as the superheating device to improve the steam parameters after the steam generator is analyzed.

Radiocarbon ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihály Veres ◽  
Ede Hertelendi ◽  
György Uchrin ◽  
Eszter Csaba ◽  
István Barnabás ◽  
...  

We measured airborne releases of 14C from the Paks Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). Two continuous stack samplers collect 14C in 14CO2 and 14CnHm chemical forms. 14C activities were measured using two techniques; environmental air samples of lower activities were analyzed by proportional counting, stack samples were measured by liquid scintillation counting. 14C concentration of air in the stack varies between 80 and 200 Bqm−3. The average normalized yearly discharge rates for 1988–1993 were 0.74 TBqGW−1ey−1 for hydrocarbons and 0.06 TBqGW−1ey−1 for CO2. The discharge rate from Paks Nuclear Power Plant is about four times higher than the mean discharge value of a typical Western European PWR NPP. The higher 14C production may be apportioned to the higher level of nitrogen impurities in the primary coolant. Monitoring the long-term average excess from the NPP gave D14C = 3.5‰ for CO2 and D14C = 20‰ for hydrocarbons. We determined 14C activity concentration in the primary coolant to be ca. 4 kBq liter−1. The 14C activity concentrations of spent mixed bed ion exchange resins vary between 1.2 and 5.3 MBqkg−1 dry weight.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Feng Huang

Abstract After Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the efforts to overcome these defects of PWRs were carried out, such as replacing the cladding and fuel materials. One of these feasible efforts is using Fully Ceramic Microencapsulated (FCM) fuel replacement traditional UO2 pellets fuel into PWR. The FCM fuels are composed of Tri-structural-isotropic (TRISO) particles embedded in silicon carbide matrix. The TRISO fuel can hold its containment integrity and without fission production releases under the design temperature limit of 1600 °C. Furthermore, the silicon carbide matrix will benefit the thermal conductivity, radiation damage resistance, environmental stability and proliferation resistance. Consequently, the safety of the reactor could be significantly improved with FCM fuel instead of the conventional UO2 pellet fuel in PWR. We also analyzed the temperature distribution for the FCM fuel compared the traditional UO2 pellets, the calculation indicated that the centerline temperature is lower than UO2 pellets due to FCM higher thermal conductivity. The calculation demonstrated that, utilizing FCM replacement of conventional UO2 fuel rod is feasible and more security in a small pressurized water reactor. In this paper, a small pressurized water reactor utilizing FCM fuel is considered. A 17 × 17 fuel assemblies with Zircalloy cladding was applied in conceptual design through a preliminary neutronics and thermal hydraulics analysis. The reactor physics is accomplished, including the refuel cycle length, the effective multiplication factor, power distribution analysis being discussed. The Soluble Boron Free (SBF) concepts are introduced in small PWR, as a result, it makes the nuclear power plant more simpler and economical. FCM fuel loading has a very high excess reactivity at the beginning of reactor core life, and it is important to flat reactivity curve during operation, or to minimize excess reactivity during the core life. Consequently, conventional burnable poison configurations were introduced to suppress excess reactivity control at beginning of cycle.


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