Small Modular Pressurized Water Reactors Combined With Conventional Thermal Power Plant

Abstract

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.