Education and Training Series #13: Energy Conversion

These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.

These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG). 

The rotary motion, high pressure steam engine was patented by James Watt in 1781. The evolution of steam engines and high pressure boiler technology led directly to the development of the steam turbine coupled to an electrical generator by Charles Parsons in 1884. Since then, over the last 133 years, the world has been using steam turbines to convert heat into electricity in almost all of the world’s thermal power stations and in all of the world’s nuclear power stations. Specifically for the latter, steam turbines and the Rankine thermodynamic cycle in which they operate offer high efficiency for moderate steam temperatures, temperatures typical of first, second and third generation nuclear reactors. Generation IV reactors offer the potential to move away from the steam Rankine cycle to systems such as helium (or nitrogen) Brayton or supercritical CO2 gas turbine cycles to exploit the higher temperatures that some of the systems generate, to offer plant simplification and potentially higher conversion efficiencies. Non-steam cycles offer other advantages, particularly in connection with the sodium cooled fast reactor, such that the risk of sodium water reactions is massively reduced. Within this webcast, the basic thermodynamics and performance limits of energy conversion systems will be explained and each of the technological options proposed for the energy conversion systems of Generation IV reactors will be presented.