University Of Diyala

College Of Engineering
Mechanical Engineering Department
Fourth Stage

Nuclear Power Plant And Its

Types

By
‫علي احمد‬

2024

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Introduction

A nuclear power plant (sometimes abbreviated as NPP) is a thermal power

station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power
stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to
a generator that produces electricity. As of 2022, the International Atomic Energy
Agency reported there were 439 nuclear power reactors in operation in
32 countries around the world .

Nuclear plants are very often used for base load since their operations,
maintenance, and fuel costs are at the lower end of the spectrum of
costs. [4] However, building a nuclear power plant often spans five to ten years,
which can accrue to significant financial costs, depending on how the initial
investments are financed.

Flanked by cooling towers, a nuclear reactor is contained inside a

spherical containment building

Nuclear power plants have a carbon footprint comparable to that of renewable

energy such as solar farms and wind farms,[6][7] and much lower than fossil
fuels such as natural gas and brown coal. Despite some spectacular catastrophes,

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nuclear power plants are among the safest mode of electricity generation,
[8]
comparable to solar and wind power plants.[9]

The first time that heat from a nuclear reactor was used to generate electricity was
on December 20, 1951 at the Experimental Breeder Reactor I, feeding four light
bulbs.[10][11]

On June 27, 1954, the world's first nuclear power station to generate electricity for
a power grid, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, commenced operations
in Obninsk, in the Soviet Union.[12][13][14] The world's first full scale power
station, Calder Hall in the United Kingdom, opened on October 17, 1956.[15] The
world's first full scale power station solely devoted to electricity production—
Calder Hall was also meant to produce plutonium—the Shippingport Atomic
Power Station in Pennsylvania, United States—was connected to the grid on
December 18, 1957.

Systems

Boiling water reactor

The conversion to electrical energy takes place indirectly, as in conventional

thermal power stations. The fission in a nuclear reactor heats the reactor coolant.
The coolant may be water or gas, or even liquid metal, depending on the type of
reactor. The reactor coolant then goes to a steam generator and heats water to
produce steam. The pressurized steam is then usually fed to a multi-stage steam
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turbine. After the steam turbine has expanded and partially condensed the steam,
the remaining vapor is condensed in a condenser. The condenser is a heat
exchanger which is connected to a secondary side such as a river or a cooling
tower. The water is then pumped back into the steam generator and the cycle
begins again. The water-steam cycle corresponds to the Rankine cycle.

The nuclear reactor is the heart of the station. In its central part, the reactor's core
produces heat due to nuclear fission. With this heat, a coolant is heated as it is
pumped through the reactor and thereby removes the energy from the reactor. The
heat from nuclear fission is used to raise steam, which runs through turbines, which
in turn power the electrical generators.

Pressurized water reactor

The purpose of the steam turbine is to convert the heat contained in steam into
mechanical energy. The engine house with the steam turbine is usually structurally
separated from the main reactor building. It is aligned so as to prevent debris from
the destruction of a turbine in operation from flying towards the reactor.[citation needed]

In the case of a pressurized water reactor, the steam turbine is separated from the
nuclear system. To detect a leak in the steam generator and thus the passage of
radioactive water at an early stage, an activity meter is mounted to track the outlet
steam of the steam generator. In contrast, boiling water reactors pass radioactive
water through the steam turbine, so the turbine is kept as part of the radiologically
controlled area of the nuclear power station.
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The electric generator converts mechanical power supplied by the turbine into
electrical power. Low-pole AC synchronous generators of high rated power are
used. A cooling system removes heat from the reactor core and transports it to
another area of the station, where the thermal energy can be harnessed to produce
electricity or to do other useful work. Typically the hot coolant is used as a heat
source for a boiler, and the pressurized steam from that drives one or more steam
turbine driven electrical generators.[17]

Some operational nuclear reactors release non-radioactive water vapor

In the main condenser, the wet vapor turbine exhaust come into contact with
thousands of tubes that have much colder water flowing through them on the other
side. The cooling water typically come from a natural body of water such as a river
or lake. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located in the desert about 97
kilometres (60 mi) west of Phoenix, Arizona, is the only nuclear facility that does
not use a natural body of water for cooling, instead it uses treated sewage from the
greater Phoenix metropolitan area. The water coming from the cooling body of
water is either pumped back to the water source at a warmer temperature or returns
to a cooling tower where it either cools for more uses or evaporates into water
vapor that rises out the top of the tower.[19]

The water level in the steam generator and the nuclear reactor is controlled using
the feedwater system. The feedwater pump has the task of taking the water from
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the condensate system, increasing the pressure and forcing it into either the steam
generators—in the case of a pressurized water reactor — or directly into the
reactor, for boiling water reactors.

Continuous power supply to the plant is critical to ensure safe operation. Most
nuclear stations require at least two distinct sources of offsite power for
redundancy. These are usually provided by multiple transformers that are
sufficiently separated and can receive power from multiple transmission lines. In
addition, in some nuclear stations, the turbine generator can power the station's
loads while the station is online, without requiring external power. This is achieved
via station service transformers which tap power from the generator output before
they reach the step-up transformer.

Economics

Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the largest nuclear power facility[20]

The economics of nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, and multibillion-

dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power stations
typically have high capital costs, but low direct fuel costs, with the costs of fuel
extraction, processing, use and spent fuel storage internalized costs. Therefore,
comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on
assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear

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stations. Cost estimates take into account station decommissioning and nuclear
waste storage or recycling costs in the United States due to the Price Anderson Act.

With the prospect that all spent nuclear fuel could potentially be recycled by using
future reactors, generation IV reactors are being designed to completely close
the nuclear fuel cycle. However, up to now, there has not been any actual bulk
recycling of waste from a NPP, and on-site temporary storage is still being used at
almost all plant sites due to construction problems for deep geological repositories.
Only Finland has stable repository plans, therefore from a worldwide perspective,
long-term waste storage costs are uncertain.

Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Eurajoki, Finland

Construction, or capital cost aside, measures to mitigate global warming such as

a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, increasingly favor the economics of
nuclear power. Further efficiencies are hoped to be achieved through more
advanced reactor designs, Generation III reactors promise to be at least 17% more
fuel efficient, and have lower capital costs, while Generation IV reactors promise
further gains in fuel efficiency and significant reductions in nuclear waste.

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Controversy

The Ukrainian city of Pripyat abandoned due to a nuclear accident.

The nuclear power debate about the deployment and use of nuclear fission reactors
to generate electricity from nuclear fuel for civilian purposes peaked during the
1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of
technology controversies," in some countries.[31]

Proponents argue that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source which

reduces carbon emissions and can increase energy security if its use supplants a
dependence on imported fuels.[32][full citation needed] Proponents advance the notion that
nuclear power produces virtually no air pollution, in contrast to the chief viable
alternative of fossil fuel. Proponents also believe that nuclear power is the only
viable course to achieve energy independence for most Western countries. They
emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by
using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in
the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power
plants.

Reprocessing

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Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and
recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. [44] Reprocessing serves
multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally
reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons.
With the commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was
recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors.[45] The reprocessed
uranium, which constitutes the bulk of the spent fuel material, can in principle also
be re-used as fuel, but that is only economic when uranium prices are high or
disposal is expensive. Finally, the breeder reactor can employ not only the recycled
plutonium and uranium in spent fuel, but all the actinides, closing the nuclear fuel
cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by
more than 60 times.[46]

Nuclear reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level waste, but by itself does not
reduce radioactivity or heat generation and therefore does not eliminate the need
for a geological waste repository. Reprocessing has been politically controversial
because of the potential to contribute to nuclear proliferation, the potential
vulnerability to nuclear terrorism, the political challenges of repository siting (a
problem that applies equally to direct disposal of spent fuel), and because of its
high cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle. [47] In the United States, the
Obama administration stepped back from President Bush's plans for commercial-
scale reprocessing and reverted to a program focused on reprocessing-related
scientific research.

QUESTIONS:

1. Classify different types of nuclear reactors.

 Pressurised water reactor (PWR) ...

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  Boiling water reactor (BWR) ...

 Advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) ...

 Light water graphite-moderated reactor (LWGR) ...

 Fast neutron reactor (FNR) ...

 Nuclear power plants in commercial operation or operable.

2. Explain PWR, BWR and CANDU power plant with its construction
and working.

A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor.

PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with
notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the
primary coolant (water) is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it
is heated by the energy released by the fission of atoms. The heated, high pressure
water then flows to a steam generator, where it transfers its thermal energy to
lower pressure water of a secondary system where steam is generated. The steam
then drives turbines, which spin an electric generator. In contrast to a boiling water
reactor (BWR), pressure in the primary coolant loop prevents the water from
boiling within the reactor. All light-water reactors use ordinary water as both
coolant and neutron moderator. Most use anywhere from two to four vertically
mounted steam generators; VVER reactors use horizontal steam generators.

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