Chemical and Industrial Applications for Nuclear Heat Output?

Delta Force

Banned
Nuclear reactors can produce very high outlet temperatures for chemical processes, especially gas cooled reactors. Apart from general heating, hydrogen fuel production, petroleum cracking, and in-situ petroleum production from tar sands, are there any other applications for nuclear reactor heat outputs?

Here are some temperature and pressure outputs for various reactor types at the outlet:
-- Pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR): 286°C temperature and 7 MPa pressure. Uses steam turbines.
-- Supercritical steam reactor: 600°C temperature and 30 MPa pressure. Uses steam turbines.
-- Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR): 648°C core outlet temperature, dropping to 2,485 psia (170bar) and 543°C superheater outlet temperature. This design used steam turbines and lost some efficiency relative to a potential gas turbine design, although it is the most advanced commercial gas cooled power reactor built to date.
-- Gas Cooled Fast Reactor: A gas cooled reactor with up to 850°C outlet temperature. Uses gas turbines.
-- Very high temperature reactor: A gas cooled reactor with up to 1000°C outlet temperature. Uses gas turbines.
-- UHTREX: A gas cooled reactor with up to 1316°C outlet temperature. Thermal reactor, no electrical output.
 
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The idea for German pebble bed Reaktor or HTR
Was the process coal into Coke under high Temperature
And also Production of Substitute natural gas made from coal
 
I've always been curious if a nuclear reactor could be used to provide process heat for an electrical or coke driven steel furnace.

Say to pre-heat the ore.

fasquardon
 
Desalination would be the big one. Most other energy-intensive chemical processes such as Haber-Bosch Process and Portland cement manufacturing require temperatures beyond that of VHTR turbine exhausts, so reactor heat would be used to preheat the ingredients instead.
 
Nuclear reactors can produce very high outlet temperatures for chemical processes, especially gas cooled reactors. Apart from general heating, hydrogen fuel production, petroleum cracking, and in-situ petroleum production from tar sands, are there any other applications for nuclear reactor heat outputs?

For heating building via district heating. Sweden did this during 1960's and 1970's, and Finnish Fortum planned to do this for their planned Loviisa nuclear reactor in early 2000's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ågesta_Nuclear_Plant

for the Swedish experiment

http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/worksho...3_Tuomisto_Nuclear-District-Heating-Plans.pdf

2013 presentation for the Helsinki nuclear heating plans, transporting heat for some 75km's.

http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/20/012/20012503.pdf

Swedish Asea Atom's 1980's plans for district heating small scale nuclear reactor.

In my (pro-nuke) opinion building small scale reactors for this sizable job would be much better than burning coal and peat for the job, not only killing people via particle emissions but also destroying environment via extraction of coal and peat and CO2.
 

Delta Force

Banned
It looks like the output from a gas cooled fast reactor and very high temperature reactor are high enough to allow for all major petrochemical cracking processes to take place. This is interesting given that reactors with such high process heat output would also be capable of high temperature electrolysis, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen more efficiently.

Not that there would be any reason to do this if you already had inexpensive hydrocarbon resources, but could water (together with carbon monoxide) be used as a feedstock to produce synthetic fuel without coal, natural gas, etc., perhaps for use in a remote location, ship, space (kerosene is a rocket fuel, and the water reaction to extract hydrogen would provide oxygen), etc.?
 
Nuclear power could be used to crack petroleum or smelt aluminium.

A few years back, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein threatened to install a nuclear reactor near Fort Mac, Alberta. He wanted to use nuclear heat to crack heavy oil from the tar sands.
Currently he tar sands burn a lot of petroleum as feed-stock and tree-huggers complain about all the extra hydro-carbons in the Alberta atmosphere.
Similarly, British Columbian salmon-huggers are trying to thwart a variety of plans to export liquefied natural gas via Pacific Coast ports. Salmon-huggers worry that some of the proposed LNG compression plants will burn natural gas as feed-stock and pollute Pacific Coast fjords. They have a valid argument because today the Lower Fraser River Valley (around Vancouver) is badly smogged in because of forest fires. It would make far more sense to power LNG plants with hydro-electric of nuclear power. That will probably happen as the cost of petroleum rises and public fears about nuclear power subside.

Currently, aluminum smelters are located beside hydro-electric dams because of their massive demands for electricity, but nuclear power would allow smelters to be built much closer to bauxite (aluminum ore) mines. Then they would only have to pay to export aluminum ingots.
 

Delta Force

Banned
The concept of nuclear power for Alberta has been around since at least the 1970s. I think there were even a few proposals for using nuclear explosions to provide the heat.
 
Nuclear reactors can produce very high outlet temperatures for chemical processes, especially gas cooled reactors. Apart from general heating, hydrogen fuel production, petroleum cracking, and in-situ petroleum production from tar sands, are there any other applications for nuclear reactor heat outputs?

Here are some temperature and pressure outputs for various reactor types at the outlet:
-- Pressurized water reactor (PWR) and boiling water reactor (BWR): 286°C temperature and 7 MPa pressure. Uses steam turbines.
-- Supercritical steam reactor: 600°C temperature and 30 MPa pressure. Uses steam turbines.
-- Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR): 648°C core outlet temperature, dropping to 2,485 psia (170bar) and 543°C superheater outlet temperature. This design used steam turbines and lost some efficiency relative to a potential gas turbine design, although it is the most advanced commercial gas cooled power reactor built to date.
-- Gas Cooled Fast Reactor: A gas cooled reactor with up to 850°C outlet temperature. Uses gas turbines.
-- Very high temperature reactor: A gas cooled reactor with up to 1000°C outlet temperature. Uses gas turbines.
-- UHTREX: A gas cooled reactor with up to 1316°C outlet temperature. Thermal reactor, no electrical output.
The UK MSFR design (using Chloride salts and Helium Cooling) ran at 1050 °C and 2500 MWe/6600 MWth. Unfortunately the AGR fiasco seems to have killed off all interest in UK reactor designs.
 

Delta Force

Banned
The UK MSFR design (using Chloride salts and Helium Cooling) ran at 1050 °C and 2500 MWe/6600 MWth. Unfortunately the AGR fiasco seems to have killed off all interest in UK reactor designs.

Now that's an interesting design. Do you know if it would have been a steam turbine design like the other British gas cooled reactors, or the Brayton cycle gas turbine? My brief research shows that lead was planned as an alternative coolant, which combined with an efficiency of around 38% might point away from the Brayton cycle.
 
One rather interesting idea I've seen, which is technically not "heating" but whatever, is using fission product kinetic energy directly to power chemical reactions. Most of the energy produced by the fission reaction is in the kinetic energy of the fission products and neutrons; these then bounce off other atoms, converting that energy into heat. But the original kinetic energy is the thermodynamic equivalent of a much higher temperature before it's diluted among the other atoms present. In principle, this kinetic energy could be used directly to drive chemical reactions extremely efficiently, such as making nitrazine and other high-energy chemicals, and this was studied by the US and Japan in the '60s and '70s. The projects don't seem to have ever been very big, but it lasted a surprisingly long time.

The downside is that the product is contaminated with radioactive fission products. These can be filtered out until the product is genuinely safe to use, but of course that adds cost, and, more importantly, stigma. I'm not sure how the cost works out once you factor in the filtering, but it's a very interesting idea, and I'm posting it in hopes that some of the Real Chemists here could comment further.
 

Delta Force

Banned
One rather interesting idea I've seen, which is technically not "heating" but whatever, is using fission product kinetic energy directly to power chemical reactions. Most of the energy produced by the fission reaction is in the kinetic energy of the fission products and neutrons; these then bounce off other atoms, converting that energy into heat. But the original kinetic energy is the thermodynamic equivalent of a much higher temperature before it's diluted among the other atoms present. In principle, this kinetic energy could be used directly to drive chemical reactions extremely efficiently, such as making nitrazine and other high-energy chemicals, and this was studied by the US and Japan in the '60s and '70s. The projects don't seem to have ever been very big, but it lasted a surprisingly long time.

There are chemical reactions that rely on high levels of kinetic energy?

The downside is that the product is contaminated with radioactive fission products. These can be filtered out until the product is genuinely safe to use, but of course that adds cost, and, more importantly, stigma. I'm not sure how the cost works out once you factor in the filtering, but it's a very interesting idea, and I'm posting it in hopes that some of the Real Chemists here could comment further.

How are the radioactive materials filtered out?
 
There are chemical reactions that rely on high levels of kinetic energy?

I really don't understand how it's supposed to work, but I gather it's basically like you're heating these materials to temperatures equivalent to the kinetic energy density of the fission products. Which is really, really high. And, since process efficiency generally increases as temperature increases, you get a very efficient process.

For comparison's sake, there are some "Generation-V" reactor designs - extremely hypothetical stuff - that turn the fission product kinetic energy directly into electricity, and they (theoretically) achieve the equivalent of 90% or higher conversion efficiency.

How are the radioactive materials filtered out?

I'm not really clear on that, sorry. This is something I've seen discussed but haven't really researched. I have some pdfs on this I can send you if you're interested, summary articles in trade magazines (PM me if you'd like to see them).
 
I'm not really clear on that, sorry. This is something I've seen discussed but haven't really researched. I have some pdfs on this I can send you if you're interested, summary articles in trade magazines (PM me if you'd like to see them).

This sounds really interesting.

I've also read about the possibility of using radiation from a reactor to break chemical bonds, and thus to drive chemical processes. Not yet found a really detailed discussion of the idea though.

fasquardon
 

Delta Force

Banned
This sounds really interesting.

I've also read about the possibility of using radiation from a reactor to break chemical bonds, and thus to drive chemical processes. Not yet found a really detailed discussion of the idea though.

fasquardon

Do you mean electrolysis and petroleum cracking, or something else?
 
Do you mean electrolysis and petroleum cracking, or something else?

Well, not electrolysis. Direct radiolysis. I'm not sure about the context - from what may be faulty memory it was either radiolysis of water or radiolysis of oil to produce chemically reactive short chain polymers for organic chemistry.

fasquardon
 
Now that's an interesting design. Do you know if it would have been a steam turbine design like the other British gas cooled reactors, or the Brayton cycle gas turbine? My brief research shows that lead was planned as an alternative coolant, which combined with an efficiency of around 38% might point away from the Brayton cycle.
Both designs exist, direct gas turbine and steam cycle. From memory, the steam cycle variant used either lead or a secondary salt. There are some original UKAEA reports out there for download for these, I think va the Alvin Weinberg foundation (?).
 
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