(268e) The Atkau Nuclear Power Plant and Its Relevance to Models of Nuclear Hydrogen

Nuclear applications to chemical processes such as hydrogen production are attractive of interest to both nuclear and chemical engineers. Hydrogen-based energy systems can greatly offset carbon emissions; however, the high thermal demand of water splitting has posed a significant challenge to the forward progress for large-scale hydrogen production. As the only commercially operated liquid metal reactor coupled to an industrial process, the Aktau Nuclear Power Plant has been the subject of a great deal of research. A thorough review of the plant’s lifetime has substantial potential to motivate the development of novel nuclear reactor design, and advance nuclear hydrogen production.

The Aktau nuclear power plant was operated on the coast of the Caspian Sea in what is now Kazakhstan from 1973 until 1999. Mainly used for electrical production and Multi-Effect Distillation desalination, the blueprint provided by Aktau’s cross-plant operation including boundary conditions, design-basis incidents, irradiated materials, and equipment safety for the main thermal process can better inform current models for thermal coupling. For example, coupling modeled hydrogen production processes to advanced reactors, such as sulfur-based thermochemical water splitting to a molten salt reactor.

This presentation will focus on compiling lessons learned from the Aktau plant, and their applications. Covering in detail the information gained from the desalination processes and its performance in relation to the BN-350 sodium cooled fast reactor. These lessons were applied to models of a hybrid sulfur hydrogen production process verified by flowsheets made in ASPEN Plus and run in conjunction with a nuclear reactor model.

The coupling of the hybrid sulfur cycle to advanced reactors and its relation to other nuclear powered chemical processes will be presented. The operational details of this modeled coupling informs current generation reactor models such as the molten chloride fast reactor. Finally, the presentation will demonstrate the model’s future use in the development of molten salt reactors, and the future potential for MSR driven chemical processes.