I have often read that nuclear power stations (or any big fossil fuel station for that matter) are only suitable for base load power generation as they cannot easily be ramped up and down to match demand.
However, is it possible to use nuclear to generate a fixed amount of power and simply divert it to the grid as needed, but otherwise use it to, say, desalinate seawater or split hydrogen from water the rest of the time?
There are specific problems with respect to the time response. One is frequency management. A famous example is that during a popular British tv program, when the ad came on, a significant percentage of the population got up and put the electric kettle on for tea. Enough that it was a serious headache for the grid managers. Frequency management needs a response rate of about 20% of load per minute and a detection time of maybe three seconds. It's just plain hard to get big machines to do that. This is why spinning inertia is so important for grid management; and why inverter-synchronized power from wind turbines or solar farms is all but worthless for grid management. This frequency management issue is where the problem is. Plants that can ramp +/- 5% per minute are just not good enough. We have that - even some nuclear can do that.
Switching out hydrogen electrolysis is already in pilot phase and on the books for new builds. But I don't know if it can do that fast enough or at scale. Ireland plans to have 2GW of wind to Hydrogen by 2035. One of the strategies is to be able to multiplex the hydrogen with the grid for improved grid management. In the mean time, they are laying a 70MW undersea connection to France. If that is the quick and easy fix, competitive strategies are clearly few and far between.
Desalination systems take forever to settle in to equilibrium. You basically have a huge front-end pumping job, and then everything else cascades from there for several minutes of process time. One possible thing you could do is fiddle with the preheaters and use storage tanks for the preheated water. But again, the problem is scale - the heaters only use about 10% of the process power. Bottom line is that desalination systems are a huge PITA from a maintenance standpoint; and you don't want to be fidgeting with stuff.
Somewhat related, Bill Gates just broke ground on his privately funded Natron Reactor in Wyoming. It will feature a molten sodium storage system to decouple the reactor from the turbines for improved grid management. Completion slated for 2030.
over 50 years ago, hydroelectricity in the pacific northwest was so cheap some people felt it made no sense to meter it. During that time a number of huge aluminum smelter plants were constructed right next to the Columbia River dams where the juice was being generated, to take advantage of the cheap power. As the population of the region grew, power demand went steadily up and so did the selling price of hydroelectricity. Eventually, consumer power demand drove the smelters out of business and all of them were torn down. In this case, the demand mix and pricing strategies worked on decade-long timescales rather than daily or hourly use.
Yes, it is possible, but it may not be economical.
There have been many ideas proposed for this exact scenario. For example aluminum smelters, bitcoin mining, and AI data centers. However, if you are going to invest in an industrial/commercial process, it usually isn't economical to just run it part of the day, even if the electricity is very cheap.
Instead of using the extra electricity in an industrial/commercial processes, another idea is to store the energy generated, then use the energy when there is high demand.
Terrapower is a company backed by Bill Gates that is building a nuclear reactor in Wyoming. The reactor is going to be tied to a salt storage system so when the electricity demand is low, a storage tank with molten salt will be heated up. When electricity demand is high, the molten salt can be used to generate more electricity. This way, the reactor always run at 100% output and you just vary the amount of heat that goes to the generator or the molten salt.
The concept of molten salt storage isn't limited to nuclear power, there are other people investigating the same thing for solar power installations. When there is a lot of sunlight and too much electricity, you use the extra power to heat up molten salt. At night, you can use the hot molten salt to generate electricity.
Other possible energy storage systems include hydroelectric dams (when you have extra electricity, pump the water back into the dam), or pumped storage of high pressure gas in underground caverns. The most obvious energy storage system is batteries.
The trick is to come up with something that is economical.
Nuclear is BASELOAD power in general sense They run at peak output around the clock 24/7/365, it produces a fixed amount of power and it doesn't really throttle well because it's a waste of fuel.
Small modular reactors are popular concept because if you have several units you can essentially shut down for power demand or just run the unit based on demand. Throttling nuclear reactors is waste of effort; thus better to simply encourage nuclear and substitute storage such as Pumped hydro.
Is it possible?almost always has ayesanswer – jsotola Jul 05 '24 at 20:20