| Power plant cooling
Developing a plan B for nuclear power in Washington
Believing that waterways used as cooling sources for nuclear power plants could get warmer due to climate change, climate scientists and nuclear engineering specialists at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are joining forces to develop a plan B for nuclear power in Richland, Washington.
The plan is to use Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) funding from DOE to work with Energy Northwest to inform the design and selection of future nuclear reactor cooling systems and assess their impacts on electricity cost.
Rick Vilim, manager of the Plant Analysis and Control and Sensors department in Argonne’s Nuclear Science and Engineering division, leads the effort with Rao Kotamarthi, senior scientist in Argonne’s Environmental Science division. Argonne is working with Energy Northwest and pebble-bed high temperature gas cooled reactor developer X-energy to determine how an existing nuclear power plant and a proposed advanced reactor design should be configured for the local climate.
Vilim notes that the most economic and best source of cooling is a local, flowing waterway, such as a lake or a river, used to provide “wet” cooling. That’s the approach employed at Washington’s nuclear power plant, the Columbia generating station in Richland. The Columbia generating station provides roughly 8% of the state’s electricity. It relies on a steady, cool flow of water from the Columbia River.
However, when considering construction of future nuclear power plants, Energy Northwest thought it prudent to develop a contingency plan if the river conditions change. Despite the relatively wet climate of its most populous city, Seattle, Washington state is quite temperate and arid east of the Cascade mountain range. There, Washington state is characterised by hot summers and cool winters. If changing climate models indicate that hotter, drier days lie ahead, more aridity will affect the volume, flow and temperature of the Columbia River.
The Columbia nuclear power plant, near Richland, Washington, USA, employs six mechanical draft cooling towers and gets its cooling water from the Columbia River through two 42-inch diameter intake structures perforated with 3/8 inch diameter holes, each approximately 20 feet long and placed parallel to river flow approximately 350 feet offshore at low water. The intake structures were designed and constructed in the late 1970s. (Photo: Energy Northwest)
“It’s a very commendable way of thinking about climate change — to plan before doing something versus not thinking about it and trying to adapt afterwards,” said Kotamarthi of Energy Northwest’s efforts. “A lot of people are confused about how to use the global climate data that exists, to make it actionable. At Argonne, we are working to provide very regional climate data in a form that industry can act on.”
Kotamarthi and his team have developed the expertise to perform impact analyses of risks from a changing climate, such as drought, heat waves and wildfire. The team can also provide translation of what that data means for local, immediate decisions and recalculate the data to demonstrate the effect 25 or 50 years from now. High performance computing resources at Argonne,
such as the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, give Kotamarthi and his team the capability to develop very high resolution regional scale climate model projections. Current model resolution is about 12 km, but newer models in development are expected to get as specific as a 4 km area. “One of the biggest changes in the USA is going to be how precipitation like rain, snow and other precipitation events happen,” Kotamarthi said. “We may have really intense events with large amounts of rainfall in a very short time, followed by periods of no rain. These flash floods and flash droughts will make managing water a completely different task.”
Source: Kristen Mally Dean, Argonne National Laboratory
Fast-build ACC for Sun Ba II, Taiwan
John Cockerill Hamon has reported successful completion of a large air cooled condenser (ACC) for Siemens Energy’s 1100 MWe Sun Ba II combined cycle project in Taiwan. The plant employs two SGT6-9000HL gas turbines and is being developed by current owner Sun Ba Power. It can be seen as part of Taiwan’s plan to move away from dependence on coal and nuclear towards flexible gas-fired power generation and renewables.
John Cockerill Hamon says it built the 48-module (eight rows of six modules each) air cooled condenser in only 12 months, noting that “it usually
takes twice as long to erect equipment of such magnitude.” The rapid construction time was made possible thanks to an innovative way of erecting the modules that allowed significant reduction in assembly time, the company says. The use of John Cockerill Hamon’s Building Integrated Modelling (BIM), with both cooling system contractor and customer having the “same tool environment”, was an important contributor and helped speed up the engineering phase.
The design had to meet rigorous seismic requirements, reviewed and certified by a third party and “our innovation outstandingly proved
its worth during Taiwan’s earthquake of April 2024,” says John Cockerill Hamon.
Sun Ba II air cooled condenser (photo: Siemens Energy)
www.modernpowersystems.com | June 2024 | 19
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