Flexible Fully-Decoupled Nuclear Plants with Thermal Energy Storage - Technoeconomic Optimization

Conference · Thu Nov 16 00:00:00 EST 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2282040· OSTI ID:2282040

Novotny, Vaclav ^[1]; Cho, So-Bin ^[1]; Saeed, Rami M ^[1]

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1. Idaho National Laboratory

New nuclear power plants may be one of the technologies for future zero carbon electricity production. These future systems will however also need significant flexibility to cope with fluctuating demand and large share of intermittent renewable supply, rather than running in conventional baseload generation. The present work explores the use of thermal energy storage (TES) as a buffer between the reactor heat and its conversion to electricity, enabling flexible operation of nuclear plants. The focus is on maximizing flexibility, ideally as full decoupling of the nuclear and power cycle islands, as well as on system efficiency in various modes. A system design presented for a high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) presents a slightly complex solution, as separate high- and low-temperature TES systems are required in order to cover the extended temperature range. Although this configuration imposes certain limitations on the discharge system configuration, it also presents the opportunity to design a more efficient system. For this case in particular, a steam reheat cycle is advantageous. Dynamic models were developed for the decoupled system in order to generate insights into aspects of off design operation and system control. A technoeconomic analysis, furthermore, provides sizing and costing of the component, followed by size and dispatch economic optimization considering energy arbitrage. This optimization shows that in all explored markets, the addition of TES system with the proposed configuration results in positive impact on project net present value. Further sensitivity analyses show impact of multiple inputs and possible technical limitations.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: 58
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 2282040
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-23-75462-Rev000
• Resource Type: Conference poster
• Conference Information: Battery and Energy Storage Conference 2023, Argonne National Laboratory, 11/14/2023 - 11/17/2023
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
25 ENERGY STORAGE
42 ENGINEERING
dispatch optimization
energy storage
Flexible nuclear plants
integrated energy systems
thermal energy storage