Cost analysis of carbon capture and storage in the pulp and paper industry integrated with nuclear heat

The pulp and paper industry generates approximately 150 million tons of CO₂ emissions annually, ranking among the top three industry sectors in terms of CO₂ emissions in the United States, when biogenic CO₂ is included, followed by the chemical and petroleum industries. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies can be implemented to decrease these emissions; however, mature CCS technologies such as amine-based capture are energy-intensive. Nuclear energy can provide this energy to CCS operations without producing point source emissions. This study evaluates the economic feasibility of integrating a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor (SMNR) to power an amine-based CCS technology in three types of pulp and paper mills in the southeast of the United States: a bleached softwood kraft mill, an unbleached softwood kraft mill, and a recycling mill with an assumption of an annual production capacity of 500,000 metric tons. The presented scenarios compare the carbon capture potential and costs of a CCS system for these mills when integrated with heat from either a nuclear reactor or a natural gas boiler. Two 200 MW-thermal (MW_th) small modular reactors were found to be sufficient to cover the demand for steam and power for coupling CCS and decommissioning the natural gas boiler in the bleached softwood kraft mill, while one 200 MW_th SMNR module was sufficient for the other mill types. Nuclear heat integration into a CCS system, coupled with a typical kraft paper mill, can decrease CO₂ emissions by 91 % with the remaining 9 % being primarily biogenic. Accordingly, recycling mills powered by nuclear energy can achieve almost zero emissions. In the nuclear heat integration scenarios, the CO₂ capture costs are lower if high-pressure nuclear steam is integrated into the mill’s existing CHP system to replace the natural gas boiler, compared to if medium- and low-pressure steam is delivered to the mill to meet process needs directly. The CCS cost and steam requirements were used to determine the maximum price at which the mill would need to purchase nuclear steam to be competitive with steam costs from a natural gas boiler. Although the steam requirements for the nuclear cases are slightly lower than the natural gas cases, nuclear steam would need to cost a maximum of approximately $16 per metric ton to compete with natural gas steam production, roughly half the expected levelized cost of heat of $31.21 for HP steam and $25.84 for LP steam from a nuclear power plant. Although the cost of the system investigated in this study is not competitive compared to other fuel options, integrating CCS and SMNRs can help the pulp and paper industry reduce CO₂ emissions.