On determining of the optimal thermodynamic parameters of the VVER-1200 reactor using computer simulation

Today, nuclear and thermal power plants make up the largest part of the Russian energy system (about 67%). The majority of nuclear power plants operating in the world use thermal neutron reactors, which provide relatively low initial parameters of water vapor for steam turbine plants, which entail low thermal efficiency values (30-35%). The most common type of reactor in nuclear power engineering is a pressurized water reactor (VVER or PWR). To solve the problem of finding the optimal thermodynamic parameters of steam in VVER reactors, we simulated various variants of VVER-1200 thermal circuits with different steam parameters using United Cycle CAD system in order to find the dependence of the efficiency value on thermodynamic parameters. Various thermodynamic parameters of steam were considered in order to obtain the highest value of the net efficiency in a given range of permissible parameters and to plot the dependence of the net efficiency on the pressure in the steam generator of the nuclear power plant.