Initial economic appraisal of nuclear district heating in France

Abstract

Although cogeneration with nuclear power has been proving its feasibility for many years and in many parts of the world, the French nuclear fleet does not use this technique. Nevertheless, current developments within the energy context may offer new opportunities to review the use of nuclear cogeneration. This paper focuses on the use of cogeneration for district heating and its possible development perspectives within the French energy transition. After recapping some common assumptions about nuclear cogeneration, we will describe the techno-economic model that we built to evaluate the characteristics of introducing cogeneration into an already operating power plant. The second step consists in applying the above-described model to a use-case describing the heating of the Parisian area, which represents the largest target for this study. The last step presents the results of a simplified model derived from the first step. Summarizing the model's main input data in a few pertinent parameters gives an initial picture of the potential for developing nuclear district heating in France.