Innovative design of a hybrid nuclear gas-cooled reactor and concentrated solar power station

Abstract

Providing green energy with less emission is an important goal in the European union to achieve sustainable energy production by 2050. Intermediate stages such as the use of nuclear power facilitate the goal of transition to sustainable energy. Nuclear power is a reliable and carbon free technology that can be used to allow the energy transition. The scope of this work is to facilitate the energy transition to sustainability through hybrid systems. Numerous hybrid systems and their concepts were studied and adapted to make a new conceptual hybrid power plant. The case of hybrid considered in this work only constitutes renewable and nuclear hybrids. The very high temperature reactors (VHTR) and solar thermal power works and generates high temperatures. The best utilization of the heat from these sources would be to save them in salt storage and later used to match the demand requirements. Moreover, the VHTR is the most promising design to deal with high temperature. Thus from a VHTR design the cycle is modified to increase flexibility. A modified Brayton cycle is introduced in the power generation process with salt reheating and increasing the production by increasing the areaunder the curve in the TS diagram. Data used in the work involves the Spanish energy production and distribution. This data is used in the model calculation for future hybrid production. Finally, the hybrid system is tested for operating conditions and parameters, such as solar field area and tank size. Optimal operation conditions and parameters are expected to make the energy transition to become sustainable