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ROLE OF FUEL IN POWER PLANT
ECONOMICS
Prepared by
J G KuchhadiyaRoll No.- 131 M E (Th. Sci.)
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FUEL BASED COMPARISON OF COAL AND
NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.
FACRORS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR POWER
PLANT ECONOMICS.
Capital cost.
Operation and maintenance cost. Fuel cost.
Effects on environment.
Waste disposal problems.
Water requirements.
Availability of fuel in future.
Life of plant.
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CAPITAL COST.
Capital cost of nuclear plants is higher than
other fossil fuel power plants due to safety-
related equipments and higher standards of
structures. Coal plants are required to include scrubbers to
remove airborne pollutants as sulfur dioxide,
nitrous oxides, and particulates but cost of these
equipments are less costly.
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OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE COST.
operations and maintenance (O&M) costs of
nuclear plants over time, compared with
competing technologies show relative stability in
the overall generating cost of nuclear powerplants. This has resulted essentially from two
different factors: Nuclear fuel costs have fallen
due to lower uranium and enrichment prices
together with new fuel designs allowing higher
burnups.
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FUEL COST.
NUCLEAR FUEL COST DEPENDS ON
mining of the uranium ore,
conversion to U3O8 (uranium oxide - yellowcake
form), conversion to uranium hexafluoride,
enrichment from 0.7% U235 to 2-5% U235,
conversion to uranium dioxide (UO2) pellets,
loading of the fellets into rods, then into fuelassemblies.
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FUEL COST. (CONT.)
Transportation costs are high for coal because of
the amount of material needed to generate the
same energy as the nuclear fuel.
High quantitative waste.
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COMPARATIVE COST TABLE(U.S.)
Item Cost Element Nuclear Coal
$/Mw-hr$/Mw-hr
1 Fuel 5.0 11.0
2 Operating & Maintenance -Labor & Materials
6.0 5.0
3 Pensions, Insurance, Taxes 1.0 1.0
4 Regulatory Fees 1.0 0.1
5 Property Taxes 2.0 2.0
6 Capital 9.0 9.0
7Decommissioning & DOE
waste costs5.0 0.0
8 Administrative / overheads 1.0 1.0
Total 30.0 29.1
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EFFECTS ON ENVIRONMENT.
COAL
Coal based power plants discharge millions ton ofCO2.
High sulphur content coal based plants are
responsible for acid rain. Where ash was disposed H2SO4 mix with ground
water .
Above all factors directly affects the human life.
NUCLEAR
Under ground fully insulated for radiation wastestorage.
Well maintained waste storage not affects humanlife.
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WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEMS.
COAL
Waste disposal from coal power plant
qauntitavely very high so transportation cost is
high.Ash handling, ash removing and dust collection
system like ESP are costly.
NUCLEAR
Waste disposal from nuclear power plantqauntitavely very small so transportation cost is
low.
High cost of waste storage plant.
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WATER REQUIREMENTS.
The amount of cooling required by any steam-
cycle power plant (of a given size) is determined
by its thermal efficiency. It has nothing
essentially to do with whether it is fuelled by
coal, gas or uranium.
However, currently operating nuclear plants
often do have slightly lower thermal efficiency
than coal counterparts of similar age.
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AVAILABILITY OF FUEL IN FUTURE.
Nuclear fuel is one type of non conventional fuel
and when end will comes of all conventional fuels
world will diverted into non conventional energy
sources
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LIFE OF PLANT.
NUCLEAR
Estimated life of nuclear power plant is 50 to 60
years.
At the End of life decommisioning is a bigproblem for dismantling and waste disposal.
COAL
Estimated life of coal power plant is max.50 years
for clean coal and mini. 20 years.(Vary between20 to 50 according to coal quality)
Total decommissioning is not necessary. Any
component of plant will be replaced after lost of
its functioning..
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CONCLUSION
Generating cost slightly higher than fossil fuels,
but if we will continuously increasing emission
than we all know about the day after tomorrow,
so we conclude that nuclear power generation is
most economical.
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THANK YOU