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China Is Taking Serious Strides Towards Cleaner Air With HTR-PM Success
Nov 8, 2016 @ 10:08 AM
Rod Adams, Contributor, I focus on energy through an atomic lens. Tech, politics, competition.
QINGYUAN, CHINA – MARCH 19: (CHINA OUT) Visitors collect clean air in north area of Guangdong Province where mountains surround with clean air on March 19, 2016 in Qingyuan, Guangdong Province of China. Urban citizens in north China’s Guangdong Province get away from smog-stricken cities to mountain-surrounded north areas and local residents think up an idea of selling clean air that a small bag of air sells 10 yuan and a larger one 30 yuan. The activity seems to be an effective way to promote environmental protect both in urban and rural areas, said a visitor. (Photo by VCG/Getty Images)
Worries about climate change and the need to meet internationally agreed targets for CO2 reductions motivate many clean energy projects. There are some, however, that are aimed at a more immediate and visible goal — cleaning up air that is so unhealthy that breathing it makes people feel sick every day as it also contributes to a early fatalities.
World's first HTR-PM pressure vessel, made by Shanghai Electric
Yesterday, Prof. Zhang Zuoyi, Director of China’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technologies (INET), briefed his colleagues in the international community of high temperature gas reactor enthusiasts attending HTR2016 about the current status of the HTR-PM, one of the more intriguing clean air projects underway in the world today.
The end of his brief resulted in a sustained round of clapping; there were even a few hoots from the attending scientists and engineers that would have been more expected at a football match. (Most attendees at this talk were not from the US, the word “match” is intentional.)
Target Market
China’s HTR-PM project is squarely aimed at being a cost-effective solution that will virtually eliminate air pollution and CO2 production from selected units of China’s large installed base of modern 600 MWe supercritical coal plants.
This is not a “pie-in-the-sky” long range plan to eventually replace those built facilities and leave idle capital rotting away. Instead, it is a deployment program with the first of a kind commercial demonstration approaching construction completion and commercial operation by mid to late 2018. Major parts of the machinery will be able to be merged into the existing infrastructure.
Schedule
The commercial operation date is six to nine months later than scheduled when construction began, but Prof. Zhang Zuoyi proudly explained that the HTR-PM first-of-a-kind delays were much shorter than the 3-4 year delays that have plagued the EPR and AP1000 construction projects in their country.
The current critical path item is the completion of the steam generators — one for each of the two reactors. The shells and internals have been completed, but the final stages of attaching the piping to the thick-walled, large diameter pressure vessels will delay site delivery until sometime close to the middle of 2017.
Development Challenges
Zhang Zuoyi gave an excellent overview of the design and testing challenges that the project has faced and overcome. Nearly every item on the list of critical steps for design and testing had been completed.
For example, the development effort included building four different prototypes for the helium circulators. The primary design included magnetic bearings, but the developers knew that they were well past the size limits of proven uses of magnetic bearings so they had a couple of fall back designs. They did not want the project to fail because of failure to deliver on a single component.
In another example, the reactor pressure vessels weigh in at 600 tons, making the act of installing them a very heavy lift that exceeded previously existing capabilities.
The learning that has been gained during the challenging task of construction and component manufacturing and the learning that will be gained during the operation of a plant that uses two nuclear heated boilers to power a single steam turbine will form a solid foundation for the next step.
As operational experience is gained with the first unit, the developers will be building more boilers and installing them in configurations of six to twelve boilers providing steam to a single steam turbine.
One of the items that was learned during construction of the lead unit was that the plant footprint could be reduced by about 50% by arranging the boilers in circles with three boilers in each circle instead of lining them all up side by side.
Increasing Value Of Existing Infrastructure
In some cases, these nuclear boiler installations will be part of entirely new power stations. The more intriguing aspect of the concept, however, is the fact that the high temperature atomic boilers produce steam conditions that are identical to the design conditions for a large series of modern, 600 MWe steam plants that currently use coal as the heat source.
During the question and answer period, Prof. Zhang Zuoyi responded to my questions by confirming that some of the pebble-bed atomic boilers will be installed as replacement heat sources for existing steam plants. Those installations will be able to take advantage of the switchyards, the installed transmission networks, the cooling water systems, the sites and in some cases the entire steam plant including the steam turbine.
The priority for replacing coal boilers with nuclear boilers will be at power plants in areas with major pollution problems. Those plants are often located very close to population centers; that reality is one of the reasons that China has invested in developing reactors that can be tested and proven to be safe.
The HTR-PM modules can withstand complete loss of pressurization and helium flow without a forced shutdown and still not release enough radioactive materials to exceed the very conservative dose limits in place today.
Cost And Value
The overall cost of this first of a kind nuclear plant will be in the neighborhood of $5000.00/kw of capacity. That number is based on signed and mostly executed contracts, not early estimates. It is about twice the initially expected cost. According to Zhang Zuoyi, 35% of the increased cost could be attributed to higher material and component costs that initially budgeted, 31% of the increase was due to increases in labor costs — which Zhang Zuoyi noted were rising rapidly in China — and the remainder due to the increased costs associated with the project delays.
Zhang Zuoyi described the techniques that will be applied to lower the costs; he expects them to soon approach the $2,000 to $2,500 / kw capacity range.
The value proposition of these clean replacement boilers, however, will be more than just economical electricity. The real payoff will be the ability to enjoy the fruits of economic development without as much difficulty in merely taking a breath.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodadam...ious-stides-towards-cleaner-air/#1b05e51c7209
First Vessel Installed in China's HTR-PM Unit
21 March 2016
The first of two reactor pressure vessels has been installed at the demonstration HTR-PM high-temperature gas-cooled reactor unit under construction at Shidaowan in China's Shandong province. The twin-reactor unit is scheduled to start up next year.
The vessel is hoisted above the unit's reactor building (Image: China Huaneng)
The vessel - about 25 meters in height and weighing about 700 tonnes - was manufactured by Shanghai Electric Nuclear Power Equipment. It successfully completed factory acceptance on 29 February and was dispatched from the manufacturing plant on 2 March. The pressure vessel arrived at the Shidaowan site on 10 March, plant owner China Huaneng Group announced the following day.
Plant constructor China Nuclear Engineering Corporation (CNEC) announced yesterday that the first reactor pressure vessel had now been installed within the unit's containment building. The operation to lift the vessel over the reactor building and lower it onto its support ring took seven hours to complete, it said.
The vessel is lowered into the reactor building (Image: CNEC)
The milestone was witnessed by a delegation of local dignitaries and company representatives, including China Huaneng president Cao Peixi and vice president Zhang Tingke, CNEC chairman Wangshou Jun, and the party secretary of the Rongcheng municipal government Chen Xu Qinghua. In addition to watching the pressure vessel hoisting process, the guests also visited the HTR-PM full scope simulator at the site and were given a briefing by China Huaneng and Tsinghua University on the latest developments in the research and design of the HTR.
Work began on the demonstration HTR-PM unit - which features two small reactors and a turbine - at China Huaneng's Shidaowan site in December 2012. China Huaneng is the lead organization in the consortium to build the demonstration units together with CNEC and Tsinghua University's Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, which is the research and development leader. Chinergy, a joint venture of Tsinghua and CNEC, is the main contractor for the nuclear island.
China Huaneng said the second reactor pressure vessel for the demonstration HTR-PM unit is scheduled to be installed in May.
The demonstration plant's twin HTR-PM reactors will drive a single 210 MWe turbine. It is expected to start commercial operation in late 2017. An earlier proposal was for 18 further 210 MWe units - giving a total capacity of 3800 MWe - at the Shidaowan site, near Rongcheng in Weihai city, but this has been dropped.
A proposal to construct two 600 MWe HTR plants - each featuring three twin reactor and turbine units - at Ruijin city in China's Jiangxi province passed a preliminary feasibility review in early 2015. The design of the Ruijin HTRs is based on the smaller Shidaowan demonstration HTR-PM. Construction of the Ruijin reactors is expected to start next year, with grid connection in 2021.
China Huaneng noted that memoranda of understanding have been signed with countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for cooperation in HTR projects.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-First-vessel-installed-in-Chinas-HTR-PM-unit-2103164.html
