The Potential of Pressurised Water Reactors to Provide Flexible Response in Future Electricity Grids

Aiden Peakman, Bruno Merk and Kevin Hesketh
Additional contact information
Aiden Peakman: School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK
Bruno Merk: School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK
Kevin Hesketh: National Nuclear Laboratory, Chadwick House, Warrington WA3 6AE, UK

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The electricity market is undergoing significant change with the increasing deployment of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) and the adoption of policies to electrify transport, heating and industry, which will continue to increase demands on all conventional power plants including nuclear. The increase in VRES also puts additional emphasis on services such as inertia and frequency response that only conventional plants, including nuclear, are readily able to meet. This study discusses what factors limit the ability of nuclear power plants to provide flexible response and how the UK nuclear power plants might be affected by the changes in future demand profiles. The study focuses on what impact there will be on current Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) plants, though it also considers Small Modular Pressurised Water Reactor plants which might offer benefits with respect to improved power manoeuvrability. The main finding is that the most important attribute is the minimum power level for long-term operation, followed by the speed at which the plants can be brought online (that is, both start-up rate and ramp rate during power operation). With respect to both of these attributes, new build future PWR plants could potentially achieve large and rapid power changes by dumping part of the steam directly into the condenser, bypassing the steam turbine. Discussions with plant operators highlighted that there is currently limited demand for flexible operation in the UK from nuclear plants when other power plants are readily available to partake in flexible operation. The lack of any requirement for nuclear plants to operate flexibly means that the UK lags behind France, for example, which has much more experience in nonstationary operation of nuclear power plants. The paper also draws attention to the fact that with increasing VRES, there will be fewer plants able to provide rotational inertia and therefore more emphasis on the role the remaining plants (which include nuclear) can play in maintaining grid stability.

Keywords: load following; SMR; PWR; nuclear reactors; profile operation; VRES (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/4/941/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/4/941/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:4:p:941-:d:322761

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().