Radiation enhanced chemical production: Improving the value proposition of nuclear power

Abstract

Nuclear power is one of the means for large-scale CO2-free heat and electricity generation. Commercial designs, developed decades ago, have not adopted technological innovations and struggle to be cost-competitive with state-of-the-art fossil-fuel power systems. Though fuel is relatively inexpensive, nuclear power plants are expensive to build and produce only low-value electricity. One strategy to improve the process economics is to use unique characteristics of nuclear reactors to provide additional sources of revenue by co-producing higher value products. A conceptual process is analysed, which combines a molten salt nuclear power reactor and a chemical process using the reactor's gamma radiation to facilitate the production of propylene. This facility is able to co-produce electricity and high volume commodity chemicals using, otherwise wasted radiation. The conceptual process model suggests that integration of units producing an energy product with one that produces more valuable chemicals leads to significant economic benefits for the overall facility. Despite the improvements, the system studied is unable to deliver an acceptable return on investment for small power plants independent of the size of the chemical plant integrated. Conversely, large plants are capable of delivering acceptable return on investment, in some cases generating returns comparable to other modern investment options.