Falling renewable prices have led to a dramatic increase in renewable generation. While great news for local, clean energy generation, this also causes big swings in electricity prices over the day. This is a significant problem for nuclear power, which has high fixed costs and low variable costs – and hence typically is most cost competitive when operating all the time. Our research seeks ways of optimizing nuclear energy for the electricity markets of today and tomorrow – through seeking diverse markets for nuclear energy (notably, production of process heat), developing integrated energy systems (IES) that couple nuclear and renewable power to generate electricity and heat; optimizing the use of energy storage; and developing competitive strategies for flexible power operation of small modular reactors
Integrated Solar & Nuclear Cogeneration of Electricity & Water using the sCO2 Cycle
We are working with a multi-disciplinary team at UW-Madison, in particular Esolab, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Westinghouse to design and model an Integrated Energy System for co-generation of electricity and clean water (through desalination).
We are interested in how we can combine Concentrating Solar Power and Advanced Nuclear Reactors (in our case, LFR) to maximize the benefits of both and best variable electricity demand. Concentrating Solar Power production varies with the sun, and nuclear power is most economic when generating all the time, so we look at ways to use energy storage and co-produce clean water to make best use of available power. The sCO2 cycle can improve efficiency, and also allows us to make use of low temperature co-generation to produce clean water without compromising electricity production.
This work is funded by the US DOE Nuclear Energy University Program
So far in this project, we have developed schemes to couple nuclear and solar energy through the sCO2 cycle.
We have also developed optimized strategies for the dispatch of a nuclear reactor integrated with thermal energy storage to help determine whether such a system will pay for itself, which is a complicated trade-off. Our future work will extend this analysis to nuclear/solar dispatch schemes as shown in the image above.
Innovative Enhanced Automation Control Strategies for Multi-unit SMRs
We are working with University of Michigan (lead), University of Tennesse-Knoxville, INL and NuScale to develop automation control strategies for multi-unit SMRs, in particular the NuScale SMR (which consists of up to 12 modules at a single site).
Together, we will develop a hierarchy of automation control strategies for Flexible Power Operation (FPO). This entails innovative work in the area of automation for control of systems necessary for providing (1) supervisory control for load following, (2) tactical control for prognostic health management (PHM), and (3) strategic control for the operation of multiple units at a single site. Developing a link between PHM and FPO maneuvers enables optimized operation to support system and component longevity.
This work is funded by the US DOE Nuclear Energy University Program
In our current work, we are developing component cost functions for the multi-unit optimization using the VERA core simulator. We are also developing a strategic level multi unit optimization strategy to load follow optimally and time the outages of multi unit SMRs.
Microreactors in Microgrids
We are evaluating the cost-benefit for deployment of microreactors within clean energy microgrids. While microreactors are anticipated to be significantly more expensive than solar or wind, they could conceivably supply firm power to complement renewable generators under certain circumstances. In our recent research, we examine the impact of location on the attractiveness of including a microreactor within an islanded microgrid.
