Reference Info for C37
Text Reference:
S. Lawrence, D. R. Herber. 'Towards the integration of hydrogen production with nuclear with model-based systems engineering.' In ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo, 129(1), 1, p. 760–763, Washington, D.C., USA, Nov 2023.
BibTeX Source:
@inproceedings{Lawrence2023a,
author = {Lawrence, Svetlana and Herber, Daniel R},
title = {Towards the integration of hydrogen production with nuclear with model-based systems engineering},
booktitle = {ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo},
address = {Washington, D.C., USA},
volume = {129},
number = {1},
pages = {760--763},
month = nov,
year = {2023},
}Abstract:
The United States and countries around the world face an urgent necessity to address the climate crisis. In addition, there is an unprecedented challenge to strengthen our nation’s energy security and resiliency. The commercial nuclear industry is a key part of a comprehensive solution providing consistent, highly-reliable power with no greenhouse emissions. However, U.S. nuclear power plants face a strong challenge to remain economically competitive due to competition with other energy sources — abundant and low-price fossil energy sources (natural gas and coal) and relatively inexpensive renewable energy sources. To address this challenge, nuclear companies must modernize their operational and business strategies. One strategy is to increase revenue by generating products other than electricity. In particular, there is a significant potential for nuclear plants to produce hydrogen that can the support decarbonization of various industries and the transportation sector or used as clean storable energy.
While the opportunity is truly extraordinary with remarkable potential benefits, integration of hydrogen production with nuclear energy is a challenging endeavor. The system representing the coupled operation of a nuclear power plant and hydrogen production facility is very complex due to multiple subsystem elements and intricate interconnections and dependencies between them. The system complexity is also attributed to the large number of stakeholders with often competing objectives. This complexity results in many relationships and uncertainties that must be considered during system design and development to ensure successful design, deployment, and operation of the coupled system. The established discipline of systems engineering, and more specifically Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), has been successfully used by Department of Defense, NASA, commercial airspace, car manufacturing, and other industries to help address their grand challenges [1, 2, 3]. Despite the demonstrated success of MBSE, this approach is still novel to the nuclear industry, perhaps due to some the factors that influence the adoption of new innovations [4]. This project explores applicability, capabilities, and potential benefits and challenges of using MBSE to support the lifecycle development of the integrated system of hydrogen production coupled with nuclear power.