Thermodynamics And Economics Analysis of 1000mw Pressurized Water Reactor Nuclear Power Unit Coupled with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Power Cycle

Abstract

Supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) power cycle has the characteristics of high efficiency, flexible and compact. In this study, a thermodynamic model of supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle coupled with nuclear energy unit was constructed. Then, the effects on system efficiency were analyzed. Based on the above analysis, the optimal design of the second loop system of power circulation was proposed. The cycle efficiency of 1000MW S-CO2 power cycle system is 32.36%, while the exergy loss of exergy energy is 350.41MW, the exergy efficiency is 72.98%, the levelized cost of energy is 0.4680 CNY/kWh. The exergy efficiency of the high temperature recuperator and precooler are low, hence it is necessary to focus on optimizing the parameters of them to improve the system's power output; the impact of equipment cost on levelized cost of energy is relatively small, and it can be considered to appropriately increase equipment cost to obtain higher efficiency.

Keywords: Supercritical carbon dioxide, Nuclear energy, Recompress the Brayton cycle, Exergy analysis, Levelized cost of energy