Simulation of 15% and 50% Thermal Power Dispatch to an Industrial Facility Using a Flexible Generic Full-Scope Pressurized Water Reactor Plant Simulator

Abstract

Nuclear power plants in the United States are increasingly challenged to compete in wholesale electricity markets due to the low electricity costs and increasingly dynamic grid conditions from competing generation sources. An alternative market for nuclear power is industrial facilities that can use the thermal and/or electrical power generated by a nuclear power plant to offset the economic losses incurred by electricity market challenges. A generic pressurized water reactor (PWR) simulator was used to show the results of a basic design for a generic thermal power extraction system and tests were run using a set of procedures to show what happens when a nuclear power plant transitions from full electrical power dispatch to 15% and 50% thermal power dispatch. This type of operation leads to losses in turbine performance efficiency due to the deviation from the design operating point, but because the thermal power is also used by the industry load without conversion losses, the combined thermal efficiency of the PWR increases. For the 15% case, the thermal efficiency increased from 32% to 41.9%, while for the 50% case, the efficiency increased up to 60.1%. In addition, for 50% thermal power dispatch, the power dissipated by the condenser decreased from approximately 2000 to approximately 1300 MW(thermal), indicating a substantially diminished impact on the environment in terms of releasing heat into the cooling water reservoir.

Expansion of Hazards and Probabilistic Risk Assessments of a Light-Water Reactor Coupled with Electrolysis Hydrogen Production Plants

“…steam pipe was used. The required 5.62% steam extraction for the 1000 MWnom HTEF is much less than the 15% steam extraction model in Reference [7]. The assumption is made that dividing the cross sectional area of the 20-in.-diameter pipe in half is a conservative estimate to determine the size of steam pipe required.…”

“…It is important to note that unlike the 100 MWnom and 500 MWnom HTEF designs, the 1000 MWnom HTEF HES design was not designed by S&L. It is a design using guidance of the general layout from S&L, but the pipe sizing and lengths were specified through engineering judgment by the INL PRA team. A 15% steam extraction case was modeled in INL/EXT-21-63225, "Evaluation of Different Levels of Electric and Thermal Power Dispatch Using a Full-Scope PWR Simulator" [7] where a 20-in. steam pipe was used.…”

High Temperature Steam Electrolysis Process Performance and Cost Estimates

“…Integration with an NPP using a small portion of heat from an LWR diverted to provide heat to the HTSE process, can significantly increase the HTSE system efficiency. A detailed process and control model of both the thermal delivery loop (TDL) and the nuclear reactor dynamics for thermal power extraction (TPE) from nuclear power have been separately performed outside of this current work [8,9]. For the current analysis, a simplified model of TPE was used.…”