Potential for nuclear process heat application

Since more than five decades, nuclear power is being used for commercial electricity generation. There is, however, also a large potential in the non-electric market, where nuclear energy has currently only little penetration. Many industrial sectors have a high demand for process heat and steam at various levels of temperature and pressure to be provided for different industrial processes. All Gen-IV concepts proposed are designed for coolant temperatures above 500 deg. C, which principally allow applications in the low and medium temperature range. Most industries need to rely on a secure and economic supply with energy to guarantee continuous and reliable operation of their process units. A modular arrangement of several units will be necessary for redundancy, reliability and reserve capacity reasons which again reduce power size per modular unit. For nuclear process heat plants in close vicinity to the site of application, conceivable event scenarios characterized by interacting influences must be taken into account. The main challenge at present is to include nuclear CHP applications into the general strategies. In the low temperature heat market, typical examples of nuclear applications are district heating or seawater desalination, both with some experience, but still lacking the large-scale demonstration. In the area of high temperature heat demand, the chemical and petrochemical industries offer ideal chances of CHP market penetration by nuclear power with near-term prospects. (author)