Search Results for: load-following

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Purposeful price pumping by constraining supply

ByRod Adams

…c economy full of lowered expectations. Beta Blocker doubled down with the following comment: Beta Blocker Joshua Gower, the only way to guarantee that energy conservation measures are diligently pursued in this country is to make energy a very precious and expensive commodity. If this means sacrificing low cost energy resources in the short term as one highly effective means of squeezing out wasteful energy consumption habits on the demand side o…

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Putting excitement back into nuclear technology development

ByRod Adams

…low. I think the authors are simply mistaken about the ability of a LWR to load follow, I understand that the plants at TMI were designed by B&W to load follow but that they were required to disable that ability. This is NOT about the safety of the plant, but about flexibility in the market. On the other hand, an MRS can load follow using internal physics rather than mechanical changes, which allows a rock solid grid regardless of the unreliable s…

Reader question – How can nuclear power help reduce gas prices?

ByRod Adams

…place diesel engines and oil fired steam plants and certainly operate in a load following mode for their entire operational lives. Since leaving the nuclear Navy in 1990, I have been working on the Adams Engine (www.atomicengines.com), a completely different kind of nuclear power system – one that uses gas instead of water as the coolant and working fluid. That design (there are not yet any being produced), is called an engine for a very specific…

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Cooper’s criticism may awaken nuclear competitive spirit

ByRod Adams

…burn waste & biomass gives them a future. And they always forget that the load factor becomes lower (and a 10% lower load factor is 10% less CO2) each year. Utilities now even want to take gas plants from the grid. This year, here in NL a complete new gas plant was dismantled, shortly before opening. Due to the low whole sale prices and no perspective on higher prices (parts mainly sold to the far east) … This Bloomberg article (thanks El) stat…

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The golden age of nuclear energy

ByRod Adams

…bility to significantly vary their output to match changing demand (called load-following). Other PWRs, as well as CANDU, BWR have load-following capability, which will allow them to fill more than baseline generation needs. Some newer reactors also offer some form of enhanced load-following capability. For example, the Areva EPR can slew its electrical output power between 990 and 1,650 MW at 82.5 MW per minute. More here: Can Nuclear Power Be Fl…

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The Fearless Green Deal

ByGuest Author

…n one of my Adobe tabs.  Molten salt storage is my solution for short-term load following; long-term energy storage would be done with a completely out-of-the-box idea that nonetheless needs nothing more than 19th-century industrial chemistry.  I am getting numbers around 20 quads/year of long-term storable liquid fuels without having to go to hydrogen or ammonia, and probably much cheaper too. Unfortunately I just lost a blog post on this due to…

Plenty of Power to the People

ByRod Adams

…typically operated in the US as a base load power generation, is not that. Load following or peaker power generation is typically left to natural gas, big hydro, or coal fired power plants. There is an instant, reliable, and economical nuclear power generation technology that can provide dispatchable power on demand when needed that is not restricted to the base load only operation. That technology is capable of producing very high and widely adju…

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Atomic fission technology is a terrible candidate for a “do not resuscitate” order. Antinuclear groups MUST not be granted right to put one in place

ByRod Adams

…tely controlled”, but that is besides the point… LWR don’t make for good load following for a lot of foggy nuclear reasons, to which the retort is: “well the Frogs do it.” The Frogs do indeed, but it is a PITA and not done by “remote control”. Other non-LWR reactors MIGHT load follow better, but we don’t have them; actually nobody really does (onesie-twosie). Plus, the non-LWR reactors have their own PITA characteristics, which is the reason the…

Can Natural Gas be Bridge? Shell Ad Says Yes
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Can Natural Gas be Bridge? Shell Ad Says Yes

ByRod Adams

…r in France has a total capacity factor of around 77%, which is low due to load following. However availability is around 84%, indicating excellent overall performance of the plants.” France is the largest net energy exporter in the EU, though during summer peaks she must still import some power to meet load. EDF charges households 19 c/kWh, and industry half that. Average U.S. residential cost is 11.5c/kWh, commercial 10.4, industrial 7. (See EIA…

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Do the math – Secure fissile materials inside reactor cores

ByRod Adams

…g at 30,479 TWh in 2035). At your rate of 150 ton/GWe-year (and 77% CF for load following generation), we’re going to get 6.746 TWh/year out of each 1 GWe nuclear plant. We’re going to need 4518 plants to cover the load (we currently have 430), and we’re going to exhaust known recoverable reserves in 10.3 years (using LWRs, higher US$ 260/kg fuel cost, and assuming consumption never rises above projected 2035 levels). Am I missing something? Duly…

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NuScale announces a major step in the NRC’s review of its passively safe SMR

ByRod Adams

…the cost comparison favors NuScale. Rod Adams @Will Boisvert I agree that load following to accommodate wind makes little or no sense. Actually operating in that mode without compensation would be detrimental to revenue generation. I can think of actual examples where a plant the operates at a steady 400-500 MWe output with the ability to quickly ramp to 600 MWe when needed, for as long as needed, can produce more revenue than one that operates o…

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NREL Study: Eastern Interconnect Would Strain If 30% Of Annual Electricity Was Solar And Wind

ByRod Adams

…plant went off line unexpectedly. As a result we were given an increase in load of over 50 MW. This rapid increase in load was interpreted as a fault on the grid causing breakers controlled by the grid operators, not in the plant substation, to open to protect the grid. It was all we could do to keep the plant on line. Another benefit of the NRC mandated elimination of the ability of the NPP to automatically cope with off-site loss of power events…

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