Cogeneration of Electricity and Potable Water Using The International Reactor Innovative And Secure (IRIS) Design
The worldwide demand for potable water has been steadily growing and is projected to accelerate, driven by a continued population growth and industrialization of emerging countries. This growth is reflected in a recent market survey by the World Resources Institute, which shows a doubling in the installed capacity of seawater desalination plants every ten years. The production of desalinated water is energy intensive, requiring approximately 3-6 kWh/m3 of produced desalted water. At current U.S. water use rates, a dedicated 1000 MW power plant for every one million people would be required to meet our water needs with desalted water. Nuclear energy plants are attractive for large scale desalination application. The thermal energy produced in a nuclear plant can provide both electricity and desalted water without the production of greenhouse gases. A particularly attractive option for nuclear desalination is to couple a desalination plant with an advanced, modular, passively safe reactor design. The use of small-to-medium sized nuclear power plants allows for countries with smaller electrical grid needs and infrastructure to add new electrical and water capacity in more appropriate increments and allows countries to consider siting plants at a broader number of distributed locations. To meet these needs, a modified version of the International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS) nuclear power plant design has been developed for the cogeneration of electricity and desalted water. The modular, passively safe features of IRIS make it especially well adapted for this application. Furthermore, several design features of the IRIS reactor will ensure a safe and reliable source of energy and water even for countries with limited nuclear power experience and infrastructure. The IRIS-D design utilizes low-quality steam extracted from the low-pressure turbine to boil seawater in a multi-effect distillation desalination plant. The desalination plant is based on the horizontal tube film evaporation design used successfully with the BN-350 nuclear plant in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Parametric studies have been performed to optimize the balance of plant design. Also, an economic analysis has been performed, which shows that IRIS-D should be able to provide electricity and clean water at highly competitive costs.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); OKB Mechanical Engineering (RU); Polytechnic of Milan (IT); Instituto National de Investigaciones Nucleares (MX)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- none (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 841245
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Americas Nuclear Energy Symposium (ANES 2004), Miami, FL (US), 10/03/2004--10/06/2004; Other Information: PBD: 6 Oct 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION
COGENERATION
DESALINATION PLANTS
DESIGN
DRINKING WATER
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
ELECTRICITY
GREENHOUSE GASES
NUCLEAR ENERGY
NUCLEAR POWER
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
POWER PLANTS
WATER
WATER USE
POTABLE WATER
DESALINATION
INTERNATIONAL REACTOR INNOVATIVE AND SECURE (IRIS)
NUCLEAR POWER PLANT DESIGN