Efficient Water Management and Selection of Cooling System for Future NPP in Bangladesh

Abstract

Water withdrawal today presents a vital issue for Bangladesh to build a new nuclear power plant (NPP) as the country has a deficit in its water resources. It is an issue that may create conflict among the socio-economic activities that require and depend on the water like agriculture that mostly depends on river and ground-water. Very recently nuclear power has come into focus during debates on energy generation, often in relation to wider issues such as global warming and climate change. According to Power System Master Plan (PSMP) 2016 of the Government of Bangladesh, it is estimated that a capacity of 7200 MWe of electricity may be generated from nuclear power by 2041 (PSMP, 2016). The government of Bangladesh has already started the construction work of 2400 MWe Rooppur NPP and planning to construct more units of NPPs in the future to fulfill the planning of PSMP 2016. Usually, water is used as a coolant for most of the commercial NPP designed in the present world. In this paper, a study has been performed about the estimation of both the needs for cooling water and other essential systems for a future NPP in Bangladesh using IAEA’s Water Management Program (WAMP). Moreover, the selection of cooling systems by evaluating three different criteria: water resource, environment, and economics, has also been performed during this study.