Abstract
This paper presents the possible combination of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology with the Supercritical (SC) / Ultra Supercritical (USC) steam turbine technology and investigates the prospective deployments of the SC/USC HTGR power plant. Most of the existing Fossil Power Plants (FPPs) and Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) employ steam turbine generation sets for converting thermal energy to electricity. Energy conversion efficiency can be improved by increasing the main steam pressure. Investigations on SC Water Reactor (SCWR) reveal that the fulfillment of SCWR power plant still needs further research and development. Combination of HTGR technology and SC/USC steam turbine technology widely used in FPPs presents the reality of high efficiency SC NPP. Through investigations on State-of-the-art of SC/USC steam turbine technologies, efficiencies of thermodynamic processes of HTGR plants were analyzed while comparisons were also made between SC HTGR plant and a designed Sub-Critical (Sub-C) HTGR plant. It was shown that the net plant efficiency of a SC HTGR is equivalent to that of a SC FPP, however much higher than that of a Sub-C HTGR plant. Furthermore, a SC HTGR plant has higher economic competitiveness without emission of green-house gases and pollutants.
