REVISTA DYNA ENERGÍA

Key words:

Energía nuclear, central nuclear, consumo de agua, gestión ambiental, optimización, modelización, Nuclear power, nuclear power plant, water consumption, environmental management, optimization, modeling

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

ABSTRACT:
This article studies water consumption of two pressurized water nuclear power plants. Refrigeration systems of both plants are different. The first one is based on pumping water back to a reservoir, while the second one uses cooling towers. This enables the differences in results between the two systems to be analyzed.
By means of a multiple linear regression analysis, we demonstrate that water consumption of both plants depends on energy they produce, atmospheric temperature and the relative humidity of the atmosphere. The hypothesis that the variables are correlated is validated by the coefficient of determination R2. The influence of the three explanatory variables is similar in the case of the reservoir-cooled plant, while electricity production influences much more than the other variables in the case of the tower-cooled plant.
Monthly water consumption and electricity production data of both plants from 2010 to 2014 inclusive have been provided by the electricity industry. As for the temperature and relative humidity, there have been taken the monthly average values the Spanish Meteorological Agency provides for the closest towns. In this case, the sample covers only from 2010 to 2012.

Keywords: Nuclear power, nuclear power plant, water consumption, environmental management, optimization, modeling.