A nuclear-natural gas coupled-cycle for power generation

The ordered bed modular HTGR reactor is an improvement on the pebble bed reactors that can hold intrinsic advantages of spherical fuel element and eliminate some problems in the pebble bed reactor design. The reactor can be coupled with a conventional natural gas combined cycle to form a nuclear natural gas coupled cycle system. This system can be used for base-load power production using pure nuclear fuel as a small modular reactor. The combined two-component system, using both nuclear and gas fuel with a high cycle efficiency, can form a large power station sized more than 1000 MWe. Furthermore, the system can be used for base-load and peak power using nuclear heat and supplemental natural gas. It has the potential to offer low-cost base-load electricity and lower-cost peak power relative to the existing base-load nuclear plants and natural gas-fired peak-electricity production units.