Chapters authored
Feasibility Analysis of Solar Power for the Safety of Fast Reactors during beyond Design Basis Events
This chapter presents a new design that unites the favorable technical and ecological characteristics of the solar and nuclear power plants. The current designs of nuclear reactors promise integral configuration of the primary coolant loop, secondary coolant loop, and a number of passive safety functions and overall simplification of the reactor. The present nuclear reactor design emphasizes on the safety of the reactor core at all times, i.e., controlling the reactor, cooling the reactor core, and maintaining containment. In case of non-availability of standby emergency DGs during beyond design basis event like Fukushima incident, etc., leading to extended station blackout conditions, the passive decay heat removal system will be affected. Hence, additional DGs have been made as a mandatory requirement in nuclear power plants. In case the ADG could not be mobilized during BDBE, an additional backup power source not affected by BDBE is appreciated. Hence in addition to the diesel power sources (EDG and ADG), a new design was developed for integration of diesel power with solar power. The hybrid system was designed to improve the reliability and availability of passive heat removal system, to ensure a reliable supply without interruption, and to improve the overall system reliability (by the integration with the battery bank). This hybrid power also gives the redundant power supply to the safety critical systems. This chapter also features a detailed reliability analysis carried out for power supplies to the safety critical loads. In addition a comparison was made between PV/diesel/battery with diesel/battery. These new hybrid systems conserves diesel fuel and reduce CO2 as well as particulate emissions that are harmful to environment health. Integration of solar power to the existing battery power will increase the reliability and extended availability of the system and thereby ensures safety of the plant during crisis/calamities.
Part of the book: Renewable Energy
Design of High Power Regenerative Battery Discharger System for Nuclear Power Plant
In a Nuclear Power reactor, safety loads are backed by standby battery system. The healthiness of the battery is very essential requirement and prominent attention is given to availability and reliability of battery supply in nuclear plants. Hence regular monitoring and testing the performance of the battery is a prime requirement. The capacity and load cycle discharge testing of the battery is done annually and the current system employed is to discharge the battery current through resistor banks, which results in unusable power consumption and is uneconomical. The growing trend in power electronics field has given the new technology of regenerating the dissipated power to grid. This paper proposes a high power electronic regenerative technology with high efficiency, low harmonics to pump the dc power to the grid. Though, it is available at lower rating in industry, the paper proposes a high power regenerative discharge system. The topology selected is interleaved boost converter interfaced to a three phase grid connected inverter. The challenges involved are high power operation, steep current discharges with a minimal interference to the normal plant operation power supplies during the regeneration. This paper also presents the system design and simulation results.
Part of the book: Energy Storage Battery Systems