A low cost supercritical Nuclear + Coal 3.0 Gwe power plant

Pedro Vieira

FEP Working Papers from Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto

Abstract: The rapid growth in the consumption of electricity in China and India has been covered at 80% by coal, which has the side effect of emitting CO2 to the atmosphere. The alternative is the use of nuclear energy that, to become unquestionably competitive, must use supercritical water as coolant. The problem is that the inflow temperature of a supercritical turbine must be at least 500 ºC that is impossible to attain using the mainstream PWR and it is uneconomical to accomplish in a pressure tubes similar to the CANDU and the RBMK reactors. In this paper, I propose a simple but important innovation that is the coupling of the nuclear reactor to a coal fired heater. With this apparently small improvement, it becomes feasible to build a multi-tube slightly supercritical pressure light water reactor where the outflow low temperature of the nuclear reactor, ≤ 400 ºC, results in a simple nuclear reactor. The design I propose will originate a 50% decrease in the cost of the electricity produced using nuclear energy.

Keywords: Electricity production; Supercritical water reactor; Nuclear energy; Coal fired plant; Multi-tube reactor; SCWR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q42 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2012-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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