System-driven design of flexible nuclear power plant configurations with thermal energy storage

Nuclear power plants are expected to make an important contribution to the decarbonisation of electricity supply alongside variable renewable generation, especially if their operational flexibility is enhanced by coupling them with thermal energy storage. This paper presents a system modelling approach to identifying configurations of flexible nuclear plants that minimise the investment and operation costs in a decarbonised energy system, effectively proposing a system-driven design of flexible nuclear technology. Case studies presented in the paper explore the impact of system features on plant configuration choices. The results suggest that cost-efficient flexible nuclear configurations should adapt to the system they are located in. In the main low-carbon scenarios and assuming standard-size nuclear power plants (1,610 MWel), the lowest-cost system configuration included around 500 MWel of additional secondary generation capacity coupled to the nuclear power plants, with 4.5 GWhth of thermal storage capacity and a discharging duration of 2.2 h. Net system benefits per unit of flexible nuclear generation for the main scenarios were quantified at £29-33 m/yr for a wind-dominated system and £19-20 m/yr for a solar-dominated system.