TY - JOUR
T1 - Sustainability development platform for nuclear-renewable energy integration
T2 - Environmental impacts, economics, and socio-political implications
AU - Boldon, Lauren
AU - Sabharwall, Piyush
AU - Bragg-Sitton, Shannon
AU - Abreu, Neyda
AU - Liu, Li
N1 - Funding Information:
The JBIG standard (ITU-T Recommendation T.82, 1993) was developed jointly by the ITU and the ISO/IEC with the objective to provide improved lossless compression performance, for both business-type documents and binary halftone images, as compared to the existing standards. Another objective was to support progressive transmission. Grayscale images are also supported by encoding separately each bit plane. Later, the same JBIG committee drafted the JBIG2 standard (ITU-T Recommendation T.88, 2000) which provides improved lossless compression as compared to JBIG in addition to allowing lossy compression of bilevel images.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
PY - 2015/1/1
Y1 - 2015/1/1
N2 - Global energy needs are primarily being met with fossil fuel plants in both developed and developing nations. Although it is unlikely to entirely replace fossil fuel systems, the incorporation of alternative energy systems that produce fewer emissions and utilize fewer resources may prove useful in furthering sustainable energy practices. Nuclear and Renewable Energy Integration (NREI) represents one potential, alternative system and is comprised of both nuclear and renewable technologies coupled with energy storage and industrial process heat applications. This article reviews the fundamentals of sustainability and its drivers, defines the necessary scope for analyzing energy systems, details widely used sustainability metrics, and assesses sustainability through the sustainability efficiency factor (SEF) based on the core pillars of economy, environment, and society—all of which aim to promote future sustainable development. The assessment is performed for an NREI system comprised of a small modular reactor (SMR), where a portion of the heat generated is utilized for hydrogen production through high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE). The global warming potential for NREI is compared to the typical emissions observed for hydrogen production via steam methane reforming and are estimated to yield 92.6% fewer grams of CO2-equivalent per kilogram of hydrogen produced. Furthermore, the calculated SEF for NREI is 22.2% higher than steam methane reforming. Because SMR designs are at varying design, developmental, and deployment stages, a method of estimating economics is presented to demonstrate the differences observed between first-of-a-kind (FOAK) and nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) units, as well as the resulting total capital investment cost. Finally, a comprehensive list of considerations necessary for future energy system development was enumerated based on four core assessment areas: technical feasibility, environmental impact, economic feasibility and impact, and socio-political impacts.
AB - Global energy needs are primarily being met with fossil fuel plants in both developed and developing nations. Although it is unlikely to entirely replace fossil fuel systems, the incorporation of alternative energy systems that produce fewer emissions and utilize fewer resources may prove useful in furthering sustainable energy practices. Nuclear and Renewable Energy Integration (NREI) represents one potential, alternative system and is comprised of both nuclear and renewable technologies coupled with energy storage and industrial process heat applications. This article reviews the fundamentals of sustainability and its drivers, defines the necessary scope for analyzing energy systems, details widely used sustainability metrics, and assesses sustainability through the sustainability efficiency factor (SEF) based on the core pillars of economy, environment, and society—all of which aim to promote future sustainable development. The assessment is performed for an NREI system comprised of a small modular reactor (SMR), where a portion of the heat generated is utilized for hydrogen production through high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE). The global warming potential for NREI is compared to the typical emissions observed for hydrogen production via steam methane reforming and are estimated to yield 92.6% fewer grams of CO2-equivalent per kilogram of hydrogen produced. Furthermore, the calculated SEF for NREI is 22.2% higher than steam methane reforming. Because SMR designs are at varying design, developmental, and deployment stages, a method of estimating economics is presented to demonstrate the differences observed between first-of-a-kind (FOAK) and nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) units, as well as the resulting total capital investment cost. Finally, a comprehensive list of considerations necessary for future energy system development was enumerated based on four core assessment areas: technical feasibility, environmental impact, economic feasibility and impact, and socio-political impacts.
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M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84959338953
SN - 1054-853X
VL - 23
SP - 53
EP - 78
JO - International Journal of Energy, Environment and Economics
JF - International Journal of Energy, Environment and Economics
IS - 1
ER -