The effect of cooling water temperature on the performance of a BWR nuclear power plant

Although PWR reactors make up the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants, BWR reactors also have a share in this industry. It is difficult to find data on the performance of a BWR power plant in off-design and variable load conditions in the literature. Therefore, the paper presents how cooling water temperature affects the efficiency and power output of a BWR unit. The qualitative effect of changes and the trend related to the effect of cooling water temperature on the performance of the power plant are known, but the quantitative effect has to be determined for specific power units. Depending on the location of the nuclear power plant, various temperatures of cooling water for use in condensers and thus various operating conditions of the cooling system can be achieved. To analyze how cooling water temperature affects the performance of the power unit, a model of a BWR power plant was developed using the Ebsilon software. The model was based on data provided in [1] concerning LaSalle County Nuclear Generating Station. Calculations showed that within the examined range of cooling water temperatures at the condenser inlet between 10 and 28oC the gross power output of the unit decreases by 91.405 MW and the gross efficiency drops by 2.773 percentage points.