Technology Options for Integrated Thermal Energy Storage in Nuclear Power Plants

摘要

In some markets the base-load electricity market is rapidly shrinking because of the introduction of large-scale wind and solar. Research at MIT has shown that enabling simultaneous flexible electricity output and constant full power operation of the nuclear core would offer major improvements in nuclear plant revenue and thus may significantly improve plant economics. There are several classes of thermal energy storage technology that have been identified to be compatible with light-water reactors on the basis of heat input temperature and mechanism. We summarize the technology options identified so far and several considerations for the deployment and operation of integrated thermal energy storage in nuclear power plants.