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Chapter 5.
 Supersize Part 5:  Repowering Taichung, Taiwan
Coal-Burning Power Plant, The world's largest single emitter of CO2

That they are #1 is through no fault of their own.  They probably feel worse about this than anyone.  As an engineer, my heart goes out to them.  As a person who wants to end Global Warming, I hope they contact Rosatom so they can achieve ZERO EMISSIONS.
 
To lead the world in the struggle against Global Warming could be no higher honor for
Taichung, Taiwan, and all Chinese.

 At 4,200 MWe (5.6 million horsepower), it would be the world's biggest repowering project.
At Norway's $50 per ton carbon tax, that's $2,065,000,000 per year ($2.1 billion per year).

Plant                            City                    Country                 Annual Tons of CO2                                                
TAICHUNG   Lung-Ching Township   Taiwan (China)   41,300,000 - That's 41 MILLION Tons of CO2, folks!
That's like taking 13 MILLION cars off the world's roads.

 Taiwan Power website:  http://www.taipower.com.tw/indexE.htm      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taichung_Power_Plant 
Google Finance info on Taiwan Power  http://www.google.com/finance?cid=14357378

Part 1  Paying for it.
Part 2  Taichung
Part 3  Replacing the coal burning boilers.
Part 4  Construction
Part 5 
Part 6 
 

Introduction.

The plan:  

Replace Taichung's eight coal-burning boilers with eight modified Russian Rosatom  BN-800 nuclear boilers.
The BN-800's nuclear heat exchangers would have to be modified to duplicate Taichung's coal boilers,
but other than that, we can start right now. 
Everything we need is for sale.  China has already purchased two BN-800s for Sanmin City.
 The many advantages to cleaning up an existing power plant rather than building an entirely new power plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Taichung?
 The Taichung power plant in Taiwan, through no fault on their part, is the world's biggest CO2 polluter.  It is fitting they receive the first Coal Yard Nukes.

It is critical to begin with the world's biggest CO2 emitter.

Part 1:   Paying for it.

Paying for it

Establish a United Nations Corps of Engineers.  Have them fix the world's power plants independent of and at no expense to local governments.  This is the answer to China's and India's reluctance to end Global Warming.  To pay for this program, everyone in the world who used fossil fuel electricity would pay a 1/2¢ per kiloWatt-hour (kWh) tax (about $100 billion annually with no fossil power plants repowered) to the UN.  (Each kWh of fossil electricity causes about 2 pounds of CO2 according to the US DOE.)  According to CARMA, the biggest 1,000 power plants in the world make 72% of all coal CO2.  The big money would run out as the big CO2 ran out.

It comes down to this:  To successfully fight Global Warming, it is the world's largest power plants that must be repowered.  To fight local air pollution problems, smaller local power plants could be repowered but that would have almost no effect on Global Warming.  Fortunately, we can do both efficiently.  The United Nations is in the best position to do top-down Global Warming fighting by repowering the mega-coal burners, local governments are in the best position to do bottom-up local air pollution fighting on troublesome local coal or natural gas burners.  Once this is understood, things should go smoothly.  (Right) Looking South-Southwest.  Office/entrance to right, low long structure: turbine gallery, high structures: boilers, inclined coal conveyors and stacks behind.

Part 2:  TAICHUNG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taichung Power Plant Orientation Tour:  (Google Image looking North.)   8 boiler, 8 turbine, 4 stack, power plant consisting of 4- 500 MWe (670,000 horsepower)  and 4- 550 MWe (740,000 hp) electricity generators.  Notice shadows of four stacks in foreground.  To the stack's right are the 8 boiler houses (horizontal line roofs and tall structure beyond) and beyond them is the turbine-generator gallery hall (tan roofs with dots along the long turbine gallery hall). 

Beyond, and in front of the turbine gallery, and running the length of the gallery, is the electrical transmission switchgear yard.  Beyond the stacks to the left are the coal piles in the coal yard with coal conveyors reaching into the coal piles.  In the distance, on the little harbor's water and to the left, are a couple of Panamax-size ocean going coal barges.  This enables coal purchases from virtually anywhere in the world.  This site is on fly ash fill and the region is subject to earthquakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Google Image oblique view looking North East.)  Notice visitor's entrance at end of turbine gallery in upper right corner.  Upon entering those doors, the view down the turbine gallery must be mind-blowing.  Electrical switchyard extreme right, turbine-generator gallery running length of facility, individual boiler houses branching off, coal conveyors coming from coal yard on extreme left.  Shared stacks, individual emissions precipitators and associated ductwork quite visible along center.

 

 

Part 3:  Replacing the Coal Burning Boilers

coal2nuclear Repowering:  The row of 8 completely independent Russian Rosatom BN-800 (1 million horsepower each) nuclear boilers (Red Dots).  Each one would be installed approximately on axis with its boiler house.  Steam lines would extend into the boiler houses to connect with existing boiler steam lines going to the turbines.  The generators would not be taken out of service during reactor installation and steam selector valves will enable the turbines to run on steam from either nuclear or coal after the project is completed.  This way, the plant could still run on coal during reactor refueling periods. 

The BN-800 is a candidate for closed-fuel-cycle nuclear waste free operation in the future which would make both refueling shutdowns and most nuclear waste a thing of the past.  (Today's typical civilian power plant reactors turn only about 2% of their fuel into heat energy to make electricity, letting the remainder go to waste.  Most of the world's military ship reactors get 30 years out of their initial fuel load.)

Other than an additional secondary reactor control console added to existing control rooms, this should be all the changes necessary to the existing power plant.

The new nuclear boiler row would have individual primary control rooms and staff for each reactor along with reactor pair-shared service buildings.  The steam generators would be located next to the reactors, in the direction of their boiler houses.  (See BN-600 drawing, below.) 

Taichung units 5,6,7,8: Four 550MW Coal/Oil units.  Feb 20, 1992: "Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) was awarded the contract for the design, supply, manufacture, and delivery of four pulverized coal and oil fired boilers including the auxiliary equipment and their Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems. Each boiler is a natural circulation, balanced draft, sub-critical pressure boiler with single stage reheat capable of generating 508.3 kg/sec (4,034,000 lb/hr) steam at 174 bar (2,524 psig)."  All units are subcritical steam.  Does anyone have Taichung's unit 1,2,3, and 4 boiler specifications?  (The Russian Rosatom 880MW BN-800 = 2,000 psig at 910°F, and perhaps 6,000,000 lb/hr?)

Cautionary Note: The steam from the BN-800 boilers would have to be identical in both quality and quantity to the steam being produced by existing coal-burning boilers.  A cautionary note is that the "two additional 550MW coal-fired units built on adjacent land reclaimed by depositing ash. The two subcritical pressure units (numbers 9 and 10) are the same as the eight previously installed units."  Only 8 units are shown on the Google image.

Naked Nukes.  These would be just the bare reactors and their steam generators.  Nothing else would be from nuclear-land.  The power plant would be completely re-used - up to the point they could run on coal again if they wished - merely by re-setting the turbine's steam selector valves.  This means the cost will be some fraction of a full nuclear power plant and probably much less than the cost of adding "Clean Coal's" Carbon Capture and Sequestration - if it ever gets invented and developed.  And, unlike the anticipated 30% loss of power and increase in coal burning, a nuclear repowered plant would run just as powerfully as it did before - and with fuel costs being nuclear rather than coal.

Russian BN-800 Construction Photos.pdf  Photographs of the Russian BN-800 reactor while still under construction.  These construction photos show the reactor to be about the same diameter as Taichung's smoke stacks.   

(Right) Laying the foundation of China's first BN-800.  The fourth-generation fast reactor (by U.S. standards), to be located in Fujian province's Sanming city, will be 51%-owned by China National Nuclear Corp., the nation's top nuclear-power developer by capacity, Mr. Xu said. The China Institute of Atomic Energy is a research unit run by CNNC.

The Russian Rosatom BN-800 is the third generation of refinement of the BN reactor series.  It is currently scheduled to come on line in 2012.  The original BN reactor, the BN-350, went into service in 1973.  Its successor, the BN-600, has been in service since 1980 ( BN-600 15-year report.pdf ), and its successor, the BN-800, are both larger and more refined - its 3 secondary cooling loops are now steam, not sodium, and over 200 MWe more powerful.  The sodium "Hot Tub" design gives it great application flexibility.  Having 3 independent heat exchangers, it might be able to drive both a 550 mWe and a 250 mWe turbine generator simultaneously depending upon turbine reheat needs.

Taichung is in a tsunami and/or cyclone (hurricane) storm-surge prone part of the world.  The shape of the Russian Rosatom BN-800 reactor happens to be fortuitous as long as the reactor can be quickly shut down cool enough so that its surface temperature is well below the boiling point of water - questionable since the BN-800's primary coolant, sodium, has a melting point of 207°F and the reactor's mass is substantial.  The sodium-cooled reactor the author worked on ages ago - Fermi One - was wrapped in Nichrome heating cables for cold-starting the reactor.  While there is the usual containment, all equipment and the primary control room should be installed at a level sufficiently above grade higher than any anticipated storm surge.  Many power plants all around the world are built on sea shores to take advantage of the cooling water so sea-size storms are a common hazard for power plants.  See:  Water Table Concern

"It has been reported that Russia has just sold two BN-800 Fast Breeder nuclear power plants to China.  The US might have had this business if Bill Clinton had not stropped all Fast Breeder development in the US." - Don Lutz, P.Eng.

 

 

Part 4:  Construction

The concept of converting a coal power plant to nuclear. 
This is another one of those Sputnik déjà vu moments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Repowering a supersized coal burner to nuclear.  The new equipment:  A BN-800 reactor mounted on a buried barge covered by a huge mound of dirt.

How a supersized coal burning power plant can be repowered with a nuclear reactor: A typical coal burning power plant (above) has it's coal equipment disconnected (above, shown lifted away and faded) and a new BN-800 nuclear reactor is added (right, in a reinforced concrete silo containment tube inside the mound).  Supersized power plants are almost always on navigable bodies of water for cooling water and coal supply barges.  Often, this means they are subject to the threat of storm surges from hurricanes or cyclones and tsunamis.  That, along with the high water tables commonly found where surface water is present, are good reasons to build above the ground with openings above the highest anticipated storm surge to avoid inundation. 

The 1,000 ton reactor is mass-produced on a barge elsewhere in a shipyard - to minimize cost and maximize quality.  This way it wouldn't matter much if the reactor-barge was made in a shipyard in Russia, China, Holland, or New Orleans.

Never underestimate the power mass production has over price.  The Model T sold for $850 in 1909, by 1920, mass production brought the price of a higher quality Model T down to $290, or 1/3 the 1909 price.  Mass production is the way to dramatically bring unit costs down and quality up.  To date, there have been no mass produced basic nuclear boilers.  The author has found several references to such in the literature and has added David Walter's version to the BN-800 page.

Westinghouse actually began to do this in 1970. 

"Westinghouse leaders recognized that they would need a partner with extensive shipbuilding experience, and attracted the participation of Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. The two companies created a 50/50 partnership company that became known as Offshore Power Systems.  Public Service did not simply make design suggestions; they signed contracts for two plants [each a dual 1,200 MWe barge] designated Atlantic 1 and 2. These contracts provided most of the funding required to complete the detailed engineering drawings, produce the license application, and to build the manufacturing facility."  - Rod Adams

Installing the reactor:  Floated into a coal burning power plant's site on a temporary channel dredged into the power plant's coal yard, the barge is first set on and then attached to pilings, and then the barge is buried, the barge becoming the upper part of the reactor's foundation.  Forms for the reinforced concrete containment silo are set, the concrete poured, and the new reactor is then connected to the existing turbine-generator in the power plant.  Note the steam piping carrying 1,000°F high pressure superheated steam.  Reds are the turbine's high pressure and intermediate pressure high temperature lines, pink is intermediate pressure reheat, and blue is feedwater.

The bulk dirt handling equipment to bring in and shape the dirt is already on site - the power plant's coal handling railroads, barges, bulldozers - they should be able to make a 50 foot high by five hundred foot long containment silo protection mound for four reactors in a row, with an access road running along its top, in a relatively short time for not too much money.  Radiation can't get out, airplanes can't crash in.  Note the vertical passive cooling air ducts.  The GE-Hitachi fast neutron, SNF (nuclear waste) burning reactor has passive air cooling (page 8), a feature that could be added to the very similar BN-800.

Coal burning power plants always have coal storage yards the size of shopping mall parking lots so there is always plenty of room to place reactor silos there.  This is all that needs to be done.  The United States has over 1,000 such existing power plant sites.  A huge cost and time savings compared to building completely new.  That quick.  That economical.  That simple.

The simplest solution for Global Warming is probably the best solution for Global Warming.

Illustrating the Nuclear Repowering idea, the above is an anatomically correct simplified coal burning power station schematic diagram from Wikipedia.   Wikipedia original sketch image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant   GNU Free Documentation License 

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Part 5: