Emergency planning zone: Constraints and opportunities for the development of nuclear energy and exploitation of its process heat

Light Water Reactors (LWR), which represent the most common reactor in operation and under construction, have an average thermal efficiency of about 33%-35%, therefore two third of the thermal energy produced by the nuclear reaction is typically wasted. The literature presents many possible applications of this thermal energy, however most of them are not feasible because of economic and legislative constraints: among the others the Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) is one of the most critic. The EPZ is the area surrounding the Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) subject to specific rules constraining the development of the area. These constraints avoid the complete exploitation of the energy produced by the power plants. Small Medium Nuclear Reactors (SMR) can offset some of the constraints since they are intrinsically safer and therefore can theoretically require a smaller EPZ. This chapter deals with the relationships among the Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ), the reactor size and the possibilities of cogeneration. After a review of the constraints for the EPZ in the different countries it show the relationship among EPZ and NPP size and presents the various options of nuclear cogenerations. These options are evaluated according to the commercial feasibility of the different technologies clustering the solutions in short and long term options. © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.