Abstract
The decrease in natural gas prices combined with the increase in renewable energy sources on the electrical grid is causing economic challenges for nuclear power plants in the United States. Integrated energy systems provide a path for nuclear power plants to maintain revenue by providing thermal and electrical power to nearby industrial process plants. This effort is intended to delay the early shutdown of licensed nuclear power plants. The design of a thermal power extraction and thermal energy delivery loop is presented for an integrated energy system which couples a pressurized water reactor with a high temperature steam electrolysis plant. This thermal power extraction system diverts steam from the secondary loop of the nuclear power plant for use in a set of extraction heat exchangers connected to the thermal energy delivery loop. The condensate from the diverted steam is reinserted into the secondary loop of the nuclear power plant in the feed water system. Condensate reinsertion can occur at the main condenser or at the feed water inlet to any of the feed water heaters. The system is designed and modeled using different process and thermal hydraulic modeling tools. Three different modeling tools are used to test the effect that varying the location of condensate reinsertion has on the relative thermal efficiency of the turbine generator system. Using multiple tools provides some verification of results in the absence of process data. This effect is tested at varying amounts of thermal power extraction ranging from 5\% to 30\% of total steam flow. The results show that reinsertion into a higher pressure, higher temperature feed water heater causes an increase in relative thermal efficiency of up to 2\% for the design.