Theses and Dissertations Collection

As the electricity system evolves to meet changing dynamics from new technology and environmental needs, nuclear power units have retired at an accelerated rate. Stakeholders and companies are searching for ways to improve nuclear economics while improving environmental performance across all sectors. This dissertation explores the techno-economic modeling and analysis of several Integrated Energy Systems (IES). A model of an existing nuclear plant’s water system was developed to understand the economic and technical feasibility of adding a desalination unit. Several hydrogen system models were developed, including an iodine-sulfur cycle coupled with a high temperature reactor, electrolysis units coupled with existing light water reactors, and electrolysis units coupled with microreactors. Each technological analysis furthered different modeling techniques, such as the quantifying influence of synthetic input on hydrogen dispatch, limit-surface search sampling for understanding how several sensitivities affect profitability, and spatial modeling to explore the effect of centralized or co-located hydrogen production.