Nuclear power plant safety improvement based on hydrogen technologies

An effective application for hydrogen technologies at nuclear power plants is proposed, which improves the plant maneuverability during normal operation, and provides for in-house power supply during the plant blackout. The reliability of the NPP's emergency power supply was assessed probabilistically for the plant blackout conditions with the simultaneous use of an auxiliary full-time operating steam turbine and the emergency power supply system channels with diesel generators. The proposed system with an additional steam turbine makes it possible to use the reactor core decay heat for the reactor shutdown for 72 h. During the blackout at a plant with several units, the additional steam turbine power required for the unit cool down is maintained by additional steam generated by the combustion of hydrogen in oxygen. It has been shown that the proposed flowchart with an auxiliary full-time operating small-power steam turbine installed at the NPP, combined with an integrated hydrogen facility, improves the reliability of the NPP in-house power supply during blackout accidents.