Fission Nuclear Power Plants for Renewable Energy Source

Abstract

In this chapter, the history of nuclear power plant is presented, and need for nuclear power plant for production of electricity is argued. The foundation has been structured and consequently some technology of ongoing research that makes production of electricity from the nuclear power plant more cost-effective. For the nuclear reactors to be more comparative with fossil and gas fuel power plants, they need to be as efficient as the traditional power plants are, when it comes to output thermal efficiency. As this chapter suggests, utilizing the combined cycles to drive and produce electricity via nuclear fuel makes more sense to own them from return on investment, total cost of ownership, and efficient for their owners, namely, electricity companies. Results of modeling a combined cycle Brayton-Rankine power conversion system are presented in this chapter and based model reactor for this purpose was chosen to be the molten salt reactor type. The Rankine bottoming cycle appears to offer significant advantages over the recuperated Brayton cycle. The overall cycle in the modeling for purpose of writing this chapter was optimized as a unit, and lower pressure Rankine systems did seem to be more efficient. The combined cycle requires a lot less circulating water for a heat dump than current power plants. The Rankine bottoming cycle appears to offer significant advantages over the recuperated Brayton cycle as part of computer simulation written by this author. The overall cycle was optimized as a unit, and lower pressure Rankine systems seem to be more efficient. The combined cycle requires a lot less circulating water for a heat dump than current power plants. Molten salt reactors and lead-cooled reactors have been extended to temperatures typical of liquid metal-cooled fast reactors. A split compressor with intercooler has been added to the Brayton cycle that serves as a “feed water heater” for the steam bottoming cycle as part of computer simulation. Adding this component to the system provides about a 3% increase in efficiency. For the purpose of simplicity, an in-house computer code was developed, where the consideration was on the steady-state situation; however a more sophisticated computer code is needed, which will take the transient approach under consideration for better accuracy and optimization of these analysis.