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Current and future nuclear power reactors and plants 127

Fig. 4.7 Typical PWR fuel assembly [1]: A—Schematic of fuel assembly and B—photo.
Courtesy and copyright by MHI.

It should be noted that in all NPPs with PWRs, ABWRs, BWRs, PHWRs, and LGRs
subcritical-pressure regenerative and single-steam-reheat Rankine cycle with primary
saturated steam is used. For a reheat of the secondary steam at lower pressure, the pri-
mary saturated steam is used. Therefore, the reheat temperature is lower than the
primary steam temperature by 25–30°C. In general, the primary steam and secondary
steam parameters at NPPs are significantly lower than those at thermal power plants.
Due to this, thermal efficiencies of these NPPs equipped with water-cooled reactors
(Table 3.14, Chapter 3) are lower than those of NPPs equipped with AGRs and
LMFBRs (SFRs) (Table 3.14, Chapter 3), and significantly lower than those of
modern advanced combine-cycle and supercritical-pressure thermal power plants
(Table 3.8, Chapter 3).
Table 4.6 lists main design and operating parameters for EPR—French PWR of
Generation III+ (AREVA company) [12].