Decarbonising district heating with small modular reactors: A feasibility study

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School of Science | Master's thesis
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Date

2025-07-31

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Major/Subject

Strategy

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Degree programme

Master's Programme in Industrial Engineering and Management

Language

en

Pages

200

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Abstract

The energy industry, especially the heating sector, is still highly reliant on fossil fuels. Across all European member states, space heating in the residential and tertiary sectors form 22% of the final energy consumption. Decarbonisation efforts are necessary to keep the industry competitive economically, and to battle against the climate change. District heating, as a technology, is scalable, efficient, and capable of delivering large quantities of heat. However, decarbonising the heating sector, is difficult, as combustion-based technologies are dominant. This thesis studies the possibility of using heat-only small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) as one of the potential decarbonisation avenues and technologies in the context of Polish district heating networks, which are highly reliant on coal-based combustion. To build this understanding, a comprehensive literature screening was conducted to commercialisation of energy innovations, energy, district heating, and nuclear landscapes, and into Polish energy landscape. To build on top of literature findings, a qualitative study was conducted, where 17 industry experts were interviewed by using semi-structured interviews. This thesis assists newcomers to the industry by building a solid understanding on the background of district heating, nuclear energy, and nuclear district heating. This thesis also collects multiple datapoints together and formulates a top-down view on Polish district heating industry. Experts estimate that the decarbonisation efforts of Polish district heating will require investments from €66B to €100B. Additionally, nuclear district heating has a long history starting from the ‘60s. Additionally, district heating is the most common use case for cogeneration in nuclear reactors worldwide. In addition, the age of Polish buildings and district heating networks indicate that transferring over to low-temperature district heating will be techno-economically costly and difficult. Thus, a heat-only SMR which can be constructed and operated near current and existing district heating networks, indicates real promise in decarbonisation efforts as long as it is able to produce competitively priced heat. Currently the cost of district heat far exceeds LDR-50’s targeted LCOH of

Description

Supervisor

Seppälä, Timo

Thesis advisor

Nyman, Tommi

Keywords

nuclear district heating, district heating decarbonisation, district heating in Poland, small modular reactors (SMR), heat-only SMR, LDR-50

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202508206656

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[dipl] Perustieteiden korkeakoulu / SCI