Advances in Nuclear Power for Integrated Energy Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Due to combination of environmental and energy security concerns, the demand for low-carbon and low-polluting energy sources is increasing. Integrated energy systems offer the opportunity to increase the value proposition of advanced nuclear power in several ways: (1) taking advantage of synergies in combined heat and power, (2) opening new markets for nuclear heat, and (3) enhancing temporal and market power dispatchability. Reliable information describing the technological benefits and remaining challenges of integrating nuclear heat and power with diverse markets will assist in accelerating the deployment low-carbon and low-polluting advanced nuclear power. In this Special Issue, we will publish papers that focus on innovations in advanced nuclear energy for integrated energy systems.

The topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Analyses of designs for full plants or specific subsystems that couple advanced reactors to other energy resources, such as photovoltaic energy, wind energy, hydroelectric energy and the production of chemicals, steel, cement, pulp and paper, and fuels, such as hydrogen;
• Modeling, experimental results and cost analysis of designs for advanced reactors for electrical and thermal power dispatch;
• Modeling or assessments of innovations, such as electric energy storage, thermal energy storage, and hydrogen production and storage, that potentially increase the dispatchability of advanced nuclear power;
• Modeling or assessments of technologies that potentially increase the value or market opportunities for advanced nuclear power, such as temperature augmentation of reactor heat for high-temperature industrial applications;
• Economic assessments of integrated energy systems that take advantage of advanced nuclear power to reduce society's dependence on polluting fossil fuels.

Dr. Tyler Westover
Dr. Richard B. Vilim
Dr. Rami M. Saeed
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• nuclear energy
• nuclear power
• nuclear reactors
• modeling and simulation

Title: Trade-off Studies of a Radiantly Integrated TPV-Microreactor (RITMS) Design
Authors: Naiki Kaffezakis; Dan Kotlyar
Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract: Advancements in thermophotovoltaic technologies enable a new alternative for the electrification of nuclear power. These solid-state heat engines are more robust and likely cheaper to manufacture than the turbomachinery used in traditional microreactor concepts. The radiantly integrated, TPV-microreactor system (RTIMS) described in this work takes a novel approach in utilizing direct electric conversion of thermal power radiated from the active core. Without intermediary energy transfer, this direct coupling allows for system efficiencies well above 30%. While providing an introduction to the concept, the early RITMS work lacked an integrated computational sequence and economics-by-design approach, resulting in a failure to fully capture the physics of the system or to properly evaluate design parameter importance. The primary purpose of this paper is to describe and demonstrate a computational sequence that fully couples the conductive-radiative heat transfer with a neutronics solution and to provide design specific cost estimation. This new computational framework is deployed in reexamining multi-physics behavior of the RITMS design and to perform consistent trade-off studies. A favorable RITMS design was selected based on performance and fuel cycle costs, which was deemed feasible when considering cost uncertainty. Able to operate on 7% enriched fuel, this RITMS case was selected to balance fuel utilization with total power output.

Title: Nuclear cogeneration to support a net zero, high renewable electricity grid
Authors: Juan Matthews; Willam Bodel; Gregg Butler
Affiliation: University of Manchester
Abstract: UK Government projections anticipate increasing electricity use, provided by variable renewables (i.e. wind and solar PV). A side effect of increasing the proportion of variable renewable genera-tion is increased support costs, including curtailment, energy storage, and (most significantly) the cost of supplying electricity for periods of high demand when variable renewables generation is low. As the proportion of variable renewable capacity increases, demand for supporting capacity increases but the capacity factor of the support generation decreases, raising the support costs. Use nuclear power for dedicated baseload supply makes the situation worse. This paper explores in the UK context an original low-cost solution using nuclear cogeneration with hydrogen produc-tion as the main application. Electricity is diverted at low cost to the grid at times of high de-mand when renewables are not available. This ensures nuclear maintains a high capacity factor. When higher temperature advanced systems become available, using thermal energy storage will increase the nuclear electrical capacity. This “Flexible Nuclear” scenario substantially reduces support costs for accommodating variable renewables, saving £14bn/yr and 80% reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions, compared to a recent UK Government scenario utilising a large capac-ity of hydrogen and unabated gas generation at very low capacity factors.