Question

A certain nuclear power plant has an electrical power output of 515 MW. The rate at which energy must be supplied to the plant is 1,540 MW. (a) What is the thermal efficiency of the power plant? (b) At what rate is thermal energy expelled by the plant? MW

Answer 1

Given:

• Pout = 515 MW is the output power of the plant

• Pin = 1,540 MW is the input power of the plant.

(a) The thermal efficiency of the plant is simply the ratio between the output power and the input power:

η = (Pin/ Pout )× 100%

=( 515/1540) ×100%

= 0.3344

Thermal Efficiency of the power plant = 33.44% _Ans.

(b) The rate of expulsion of thermal energy is basically the remaining power that was not converted to heat. We can either multiply the remaining 69.366% to our total power, or we can just subtract our useful power from our total power:

Pw =1540 MW− 515 MW = 1025 MW

We will thus get: Pw = 1025 MW _Ans

The rate at which thermal energy expelled by the plant is 1025 MW.