ICONE19-43204 Evaluation of HTGR Cogeneration Plant Load-Follow Operations Capability

Xing L. Yan, Hiroyuki Sato, Yukio Tachibana
2011 The Proceedings of the International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE)  
HTGR as a high temperature (950 o C) nuclear heat source can efficiently generate variable energy products including electricity, hydrogen, and process heat. This paper describes the plant design of a modular (600MWt) HTGR system cogenerating electricity and process heat and discusses its operational feasibility of electric load follow using a new control scheme. The system generates electricity by direct cycle gas turbine and process heat through a topping high temperature intermediate heat
more » ... hanger. The process heat is transported via a secondary heat transport loop to such an industrial plant as hydrogen or steam production plant. The electricity generated supplies external grid output while meeting in-house power consumption in the reactor and the production plant. The load follow operations are performed by controlling the reactor coolant inventory while keeping the primary system thermal conditions including reactor power, reactor temperature, and turbine temperatures unchanged. This control strategy is designed to achieve high thermal efficiency in a wide range of part electric load and, by minimizing thermal transient of the reactor, to enable response to rapid load follow demand. The newly proposed control strategy is evaluated by simulation of a bounding load-follow event. The results of the simulation are discussed.
doi:10.1299/jsmeicone.2011.19._icone1943_78 fatcat:l5zmylopbrcxlhzypa6quqmbtm