Opportunities and challenges of converting coal-fired power plants to nuclear power plants

Abstract The constant increasing of world’s energy needs and meanwhile the adopted environmental protection policies in the last decade, have led to a reassessment of the sources and technologies used for production of thermal energy and electricity. The policy of carbon neutrality imposes the shut down and replacement of the most environmentally polluting power plants by 2050 which usually are Coal-Fired Power Plants (CPP). They could be replaced by Renewable Power Plants (RPP) or Nuclear Power Plants (NPP). The most promising is the conversion of CPP to NPP (C2N) using nuclear technologies and especially Small modular reactors (SMR) which are the most suitable for the task. This paper provides an overall assessment of the possibilities for C2N transformation with SMR, taking into account the aspects of site selection requirements, available water resources, the possibilities of using existing equipment, systems and infrastructure, the available nuclear technology, as well as non-technical factors. The different options for C2N are examined, focusing on retrofitting and repowering because both options could be the most beneficial ones according to the initial evaluations. However, they face many challenges to overcome due to the combination of different types of equipment that will have to operate with vastly different parameters than originally designed in the case of repowering. The available solutions are discussed here reading the level of development of SMR technologies and the possibilities for their industrialization in a short time, but also the most significant challenges and obstacles to the transformation of CPPs into NPPs.