A supercritical carbon dioxide cycle for next generation nuclear reactors

A systematic, detailed major component and system design evaluation and multiple-parameter optimization under practical constraints has been performed of the family of supercritical CO[subscript 2] Brayton power cycles for application to advanced nuclear reactors. The recompression cycle is shown to excel with respect to simplicity, compactness, cost and thermal efficiency. The main advantage of the supercritical CO[subscript 2] cycle is comparable efficiency with the helium Brayton cycle at significantly lower temperature (550ºC vs. 850ºC, but higher pressure (20 MPa vs. 8 MPa). The supercritical CO[subscript 2] cycle is well suited to any type of nuclear reactor with core outlet temperature above ~ 500ºC in…