Opportunity Identification and Recommendations for Nuclear Integration with Industrial Heat Users
Idaho National Laboratory is developing a roadmap to identify and assist industrial heat and electricity users with decarbonization via integration with nuclear power plants that can provide clean, abundant, and dispatchable energy. The roadmap is a library of documents and models which guide specific industries to potential nuclear technologies based on their needs. Considerations include specific industrial hazards which impact siting of an NPP, heat transport requirements and associated technologies, and feasibility of implementation with site-specific demand profiles. Facility process models will be based on real data obtained from a survey of baseline requirements and process information (e.g., methods, quality, quantity of required heat inputs) of industrial facilities in the United States.
The assessment of siting and technical data will reveal opportunities for single-use nuclear integration and co-location opportunities for industries to share benefits from a single reactor. In addition to existing facilities, this “energy-park” style cooperation could include new construction like data centers to cost-share energy investments or provide a stable demand and revenue stream to the investor. This presentation will brief attendees on the current status of the Roadmap, share the results of the industrial survey, and provide insights on suitable pairings for specific industries and reactor technologies.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Daniel Mikkelson is the lead developer of HYBRID, the modeling repository of the Integrated Energy Systems team at Idaho National Laboratory. Current research topics include thermal integration studies of nuclear generated heat with non-electric applications, experimental validation of HYBRID modeling, characterization of thermal and electrical needs in industrial processes, and experimental modeling of thermal storage systems. Daniel has been with INL since 2019, applying his primary research background centered on dynamic modeling of integrated energy systems with focuses on advanced reactor modeling, thermal energy storage, integration methods, and control design for feedback mitigation. Daniel has multiple publications in conferences and journals based on his work in these areas and received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University.
