Webinar on Nuclear Heat to Decarbonize the Energy Sector

Date and time

Tuesday, 13 July 2021
15:00 Europe Summer Time (Berlin, GMT+02:00)

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Description

Global climate change has already observable effects on the environment and there is an international consensus now on the urgency to act in order to decarbonize the whole energy sector. Worldwide leaders will gather this year in the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, planned for Nov 1 - Nov 12, 2021 in Glasgow to discuss how to join efforts and address the urgency to mitigate climate change.

Using nuclear power plants not only for electricity generation but also to provide simultaneously electricity and process heat for industrial applications is an attractive option for decarbonizing the whole energy sector, while also boosting the efficiency of nuclear power plants.
In general, heat consumption can be divided into two temperature levels:

• Low-temperature heat, which includes hot water or low-quality steam for applications such as district heating, and seawater desalination.
• High-temperature process heat for various industrial applications (aluminium production, chemicals, steel industry, coal gasification – to name a few) and hydrogen production.

There is existent operational experience capitalizing the low temperature heat, as well as dedicated industrial initiatives in countries like China, USA, France and Russian Federation to make use of the existent nuclear fleet for non-electric applications, while continuous international efforts are dedicated to accelerate the deployment of high temperature heat from nuclear reactors. The common challenges faced by nuclear heat applications projects include:

• Need for demonstration projects;
• Need to understand better the markets and competitiveness with respect to other technology options;
• Effective communication with stakeholders;
• Role of governments to ensure a level playing field and create the proper frameworks and mechanisms;
• Enhance the international cooperation to reduce the time to deployment.

Facilitating discussion between various stakeholders, this webinar is seeking to address the role of nuclear in decarbonizing heat, while illustrating some case studies to serve for reflection on how existent nuclear technologies can be capitalized for heat applications and discuss how new nuclear technologies can accelerate deployment, based on lessons learned to address the challenges above.

The webinar is intended to a broad audience from policy makers, nuclear power operators, newcomer countries, and anyone who is interested to learn more and engage in a discussion on how nuclear heat can be capitalized in the context of the urgent need for decarbonization.

Panelists

Ms Neva Espinoza, Vice President, Energy Supply and Low-Carbon Resources at the Electric Power Research Institute, USA
Mr Zhang Ping, Researcher at the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University, China
Mr Jozef Sobolewski, Plenipotentiary Director for High Temperature Reactors Development at National Centre for Nuclear Research, Poland/ Chairman of the European Nuclear Cogeneration Industry Initiative (NC2I)

Moderator

Rauli Partanen (Think Atom)